How to setup your android development environment

There are many ways to setup development environment for Android. In this tutorial I will guide you about setting up portable android development environment. Once you setup android development environment using this tutorial you don't need to setup it again on another machine, you can simply copy paste the whole development environment to a new machine.

Before getting started with the Android SDK, take a moment to confirm that your development computer meets the following System Requirements-

Windows XP (32-bit), Vista (32- or 64-bit), or Windows 7 (32- or 64-bit)
Mac OS X 10.5.8 or later (x86 only)
Linux (tested on Ubuntu Linux, Lucid Lynx)

             - GNU C Library (glibc) 2.7 or later is required
             - On Ubuntu Linux, version 8.04 or later is required
             - 64-bit distributions must be capable of running 32-bit applications.

After confirming these requirements you need to download the following tools-

Android SDK (In this section you found two downloads for windows that is .exe packege & .zip package, You have to download the .zip sdk package for windows)
Eclipse IDE for Java Developers
JDK 5 or Later (JRE alone is not sufficient)

After downloading these tools please follow the following steps to setup your development environment-

Step 1.

Install the JDK on your machine and setup java environment variables.

Step 2.

Create a folder named 'Developer' under C drive or any other drive you want to create. Under Developer folder Create another folder called 'Android', Now further under Android folder create a new folder called 'Workspace'

Step 3.

Now extract android-sdk-windows under the following location ' C:\Developer\Android ' after extracing sdk now you need to extract eclipse under the following location ' C:\Developer\ ' , after extracting the eclipse create eclipse program shortcut on desktop to quick launch the eclipse IDE.

Step 4.

Now launch the eclipse IDE, when you launch eclipse it ask you about the workspace then you select the following workspace for eclipse ' C:\Developer\Android\Workspace ' & then check the ' I used the default location ' option from dialog box.

Step 5.

After launching eclipse, Select Help > Install New Software > Add ,

Then you see ' Add Repository ' dialog box will appear, Write ' Android ' in the name field & type the following url in location field - http://dl-ssl.google.com/android/eclipse/ & now click OK.

In the Available Software dialog, select the checkbox next to Developer Tools and click Next. In the next window, you'll see a list of the tools to be downloaded. Click Next. Read and accept the license agreements, then click Finish.

Note: If you get a security warning saying that the authenticity or validity of the software can't be established, click OK.

When the installation completes, restart Eclipse.

Step 6.

After restarting the eclipse we need to tell Eclipse where we copied the "Android SDK" in step 3. Select 'Windows > Preferences'

Select ' Android ' from the left panel. After you select ' Android ' you will receive an error. That is because it is not setup yet. We are setting it up now.

For the SDK Location, browse to where you installed the SDK (C:\Developer\Android\android-sdk-windows). Press "OK"

A dialog box will appear. If you want to send usage data to Google leave it checked, other uncheck it and press "Proceed". This dialog box can sometimes get trapped beneath your window. Minimize Eclipse if you don't see it.

Step 7.

Finally you need to download all or desired android platforms packages, You can simply do this by opening Android SDK Manager, See the screenshot for more info.

After your click the Android SDK Manager window will appear, here you can select the platforms you want to install, after checking platforms click on 'Install Packages' and accept the Software Licence, after some time your desired android platform will download and installed automatically.