Installing the SDK
This page describes how to install the Android SDK and set up your development environment. If you haven't
downloaded the SDK yet, you can use the link below to get started. Then read the rest of this document to learn
how to install, configure, and use the SDK to create Android applications.
Upgrading?
If you have already downloaded an earlier version of the SDK and developed applications on it, please read the document instead. The Upgrading document explains
how to migrate your existing development environment and applications to the new SDK release. The document also provides
information that you will find useful during the upgrade, such as lists of framework and API changes.
Contents
System and Software Requirements
To develop Android applications using the code and tools in the
Android SDK, you need a suitable development computer and development
environment, as described below.
Supported Operating Systems
Windows XP or Vista
Mac OS X 10.4.8 or later (x86 only)
Linux (tested on Linux Ubuntu Dapper Drake)
Supported Development Environments
Eclipse IDE
3.2, 3.3 (Europa)Eclipse plugin (included in most Eclipse IDE packages)
(optional, but needed for the Android Editors feature; included in )
(JRE alone is not sufficient)
Not compatible with Gnu Compiler for Java (gcj)
(optional)
Other development environments or IDEs
(JRE alone is not sufficient)
Not compatible with Gnu Compiler for Java (gcj)
1.6.5 or later for Linux and Mac, 1.7 or later for Windows
Note: If JDK is already installed on your development computer,
please take a moment to make sure that it meets the version
requirements listed above. In
particular, note that some Linux distributions may include JDK 1.4 or
Gnu Compiler for Java, both of which are not supported for Android
development.
Installing the SDK
After downloading the SDK, unpack the
.zip archive to a suitable location on your machine. By default, the
SDK files are unpacked into a directory named android_sdk_>__. The directory contains the subdirectories tools/, samples/, and others.
Make
a note of the name and location of the unpacked SDK directory on your
system — you will need to refer to the SDK directory later, when
setting up the Android plugin or using SDK tools.
Optionally, you can add the path to the SDK tools directory to your path. As mentioned above, the tools/ directory is located in the SDK directory.
On Linux, edit your ~/.bash_profile or ~/.bashrc file. Look
for a line that sets the PATH environment variable and add the
full path to the tools/ directory to it. If you don't
see a line setting the path, you can add one:export PATH=${PATH}:/tools
On a Mac, look in your home directory for .bash_profile and
proceed as for Linux. You can create the .bash_profile, if
you haven't already set one up on your machine.
On Windows, right click on My Computer, and select Properties.
Under the Advanced tab, hit the Environment Variables button, and in the
dialog that comes up, double-click on Path under System Variables. Add the full path to the tools/ directory to the path.
Adding tools to your path lets you run Android Debug Bridge (adb) and the other command line
without needing to supply the full path to the tools directory. Note
that, if you update your SDK, you should remember to update your PATH
settings to point to the new location, if different.
Installing the Eclipse Plugin (ADT)
Tips for downloading ADT
If you are having trouble downloading the ADT plugin after following the steps listed at left, here are some suggestions:
In Step 4, try changing the remote update site URL to use http, rather than https.
If you are behind a firewall (such as a corporate firewall), make
sure that you have properly configured your proxy settings in Eclipse.
In Eclipse 3.3, you can configure proxy information from the main
Eclipse menu in Window > Preferences > General > Network Connections. In Eclipse 3.2, use Window > Preferences > Install/Update.
If you are still unable to use Eclipse to download the ADT plugin,
follow these steps to download and install the plugin from your
computer:
Unpack the zip file in its own folder
Follow steps 1 and 2 in the default install instructions (on the left)
Press New Local Site...
In the resulting dialog box, select the folder where you unpacked the zip file
Follow steps 5 through 11 in the default install instructions (on the left) to complete the installation
Note that to update your plugin, you will have to follow these steps again instead of the default update instructions.
If you will be using the Eclipse IDE as your environment for
developing Android applications, you can install a custom plugin called
Android Development Tools (ADT), which adds integrated support for
Android projects and tools. The ADT plugin includes a variety of
powerful extensions that make creating, running, and debugging Android
applications faster and easier.
If you will not be using the Eclipse IDE, you do not need to download or install the ADT plugin.
To download and install the ADT plugin, follow the steps below.
Start Eclipse, then select Help > Software Updates > Find
and Install....
In the dialog that appears, select Search for new features to install and press Next.
Press New Remote Site.
In the resulting dialog box, enter a name for the remote site (e.g. Android Plugin) and enter this as its URL:
Press OK.
You should now see the new site added to the search list (and checked).
Press Finish.
In the subsequent Search Results dialog box, select the checkbox for
Android Plugin > Developer Tools.
This will check both features: "Android Developer Tools", and "Android
Editors". The Android Editors feature is optional, but recommended. If
you choose to install it, you need the WST plugin mentioned earlier in this
page.
Now press Next.
Read the license agreement and then select Accept terms of the license agreement, if appropriate. Press Next.
Press Finish.
The ADT plugin is not signed; you can accept the installation anyway
by pressing Install All.
Restart Eclipse.
After restart, update your Eclipse preferences to point to the SDK directory:Select Window > Preferences... to open the Preferences
panel. (Mac OS X: Eclipse > Preferences)
Select Android from the left panel.
For the SDK Location in the main panel, press Browse... and locate the SDK directory.
Press Apply, then OK.
Note that the "Android Editors" feature of ADT requires several optional
Eclipse components (for example, WST). If you encounter an error when
installing ADT, your Eclipse installion might not include those components.
For information about how to quickly add the necessary components to your
Eclipse installation, see the troubleshooting topic
.
Updating the ADT Plugin
In some cases, a new ADT plugin may become available for your
existing version of the SDK. You can use the steps below to update the
ADT plugin from inside Eclipse.
Select Help > Software Updates > Find and Install....
Select Search for updates of the currently installed features and press Finish.
If any update for ADT is available, select and install.
Alternatively,
Select Help > Software Updates > Manage Configuration.
Navigate down the tree and select Android Development Tools
Select Scan for Updates under Available Tasks.
Developing Android Applications on Eclipse
To begin developing Android applications in the Eclipse IDE, you
first create an Android project and then set up a launch configuration.
After that, you can write, run, and debug your application.
The sections below provide instructions assuming that you have
installed the ADT plugin in your Eclipse environment. If you haven't
installed the ADT plugin, you should do that before using the
instructions below. See the for more information.
Creating an Android Project
The ADT plugin provides a New Project Wizard that you can use to
quickly create an Eclipse project for new or existing code. To create
the project, follow these steps:
Select File > New > Project
Select Android > Android Project, and press Next
Select the contents for the project:Select Create new project in workspace to start a project for new code.
Enter
the project name, the base package name, the name of a single Activity
class to create as a stub .java file, and a name to use for your
application.
Select Create project from existing source
to start a project from existing code. Use this option if you want to
build and run any of the sample applications included with the SDK. The
sample applications are located in the samples/ directory in the SDK.
Browse to the directory containing the existing source code and
click OK. If the directory contains a valid Android manifest file, the
ADT plugin fills in the package, activity, and application names for
you.
Press Finish.
The ADT plugin creates the these folders and
files for you as appropriate for the type of project:
src/ A
folder that includes your stub .java Activity file.
res/ A folder for your
resources.
AndroidManifest.xml The
manifest for your project.
Creating a Launch Configuration
Before you can run and debug your application in Eclipse, you must
create a launch configuration for it. A launch configuration specifies
the project to launch, the Activity to start, the emulator options to
use, and so on.
To create a launch configuration for the application, follow these steps:
Select Run> Open Run Dialog...or Run> Open
Debug Dialog...as appropriate.
In the project type list on the left, right-click Android Application and
select New.
Enter a name for your configuration.
On the Android tab, browse for the project and Activity to start.
On the Target tab, set the desired screen and network properties, as well as any other .
You can set additional options on the Common tab as desired.
Press Apply to save the launch configuration, or press Run or Debug (as appropriate).
Running and Debugging an Application
Once you've set up the project and launch configuration for your application, you can run or debug it as described below.
From the Eclipse main menu, select Run > Run or Run > Debug as appropriate, to run or debug the active launch configuration.
Note that the active launch configuration is the one most recently
selected in the Run configuration manager. It does not necessarily
correspond to the application that is selected in the Eclipse
Navigation pane (if any).
To set or change the active launch configuration, use the Run configuration manager, which you can access through Run > Open Run Dialog... or Run > Open Debug Dialog....
Running or debugging the application triggers these actions:
Starts the emulator, if it is not already running.
Compiles the project, if there have been changes since the last build, and installs the application on the emulator.
Run starts the application.
Debug
starts the application in "Wait for debugger" mode, then opens the
Debug perspective and attaches the Eclipse Java debugger to the
application.
Developing Android Applications with Other IDEs and Tools
The recommended way to develop an Android application is to use
Eclipse
with the Android plugin. This plugin provides editing, building,
and debugging functionality integrated right into the IDE. However, the SDK
includes tools to enable you to develop with other IDEs, including intelliJ
(or if you'd rather use Eclipse without the plugin).
Creating an Android Project
The Android SDK includes activityCreator, a program
that generates a number of stub files for your project, as well as a
build file. You can use the program to create an Android project for
new code or from existing code, such as the sample applications
included in the SDK. For Linux and Mac, the SDK provides activityCreator.py, a Python script, and for Windows, activityCreator.bat, a batch script. Regardless of platform, you can use activityCreator in the same way.
To run activityCreator and create an Android project, follow these steps:
In the command line, change to the tools/
directory of the SDK and create a new directory for your project files.
If you are creating a project from existing code, change to the root
folder of your application instead.
Run activityCreator.
In the command, you must specify a fully-qualified class name as an
argument. If you are creating a project for new code, the class
represents the name of a stub class that the script will create. If you
are creating a project from existing code, you must specify the name of
one Activity class in the package. Command options for the script
include:--out which sets the output
directory. By default, the output directory is the current directory.
If you created a new directory for your project files, use this option
to point to it.
--ide intellij, which generates IntelliJ IDEA project files in the newly created project
Here's an example:
~/android_linux_sdk/tools $ ./activityCreator.py --out myproject your.package.name.ActivityName
package: your.package.name
out_dir: myproject
activity_name: ActivityName
~/android_linux_sdk/tools $
The activityCreator script generates the following files and directories (but will not overwrite existing ones):
AndroidManifest.xml The application manifest file, synced to the specified Activity class for the project.
build.xml An Ant file that you can use to build/package the application.
src/your/package/name/ActivityName.java The Activity class you specified on input.
your_activity.iml, your_activity.ipr,
your_activity.iws [only
with the -ide intelliJ flag] intelliJ project
files.
res/ A directory to hold resources.
src/ The source directory.
bin/ The output directory for the build script.
You can now move your folder wherever you want for development, but keep in mind
that you'll have to use the program in the tools/ folder to
send files to the emulator, so you'll need access between your solution and
the tools/ folder.
Also, you should refrain from moving the
location of the SDK directory, since this will break the build scripts (they
will need to be manually updated to reflect the new SDK location before they will
work again).
Building an Android Application
Use the Ant build.xml file generated by
activityCreator to build your application.
If you don't have it, you can obtain Ant from the
. Install it and make
sure it is on your executable path.
Before calling Ant, you need to declare the JAVA_HOME environment variable to specify the path to where the JDK is installed.
Note: When installing JDK on Windows, the default is to install in the "Program Files" directory. This location will cause ant to fail, because of the space. To fix the problem, you can specify the JAVA_HOME variable like this: set JAVA_HOME=c:\Prora~1\Java\. The easiest solution, however, is to install JDK in a non-space directory, for example: c:\java\jdk1.6.0_02.
If you have not done so already, follow the instructions for Creating a
New Project above to set up the project.
You can now run the Ant build file by simply typing ant in the same folder
as the build.xml file for your project. Each time you change
a source file or resource, you should run ant again and it will package up the
latest version of the application for you to deploy.
Running an Android Application
To run a compiled
application, you will upload the .apk file to the /data/app/directory
in the emulator using the tool as described here:
Start the emulator (run /tools/emulator from the command line)
On the emulator, navigate to the home screen (it is best not to have that
application running when you reinstall it on the emulator; press the Home key
to navigate away from that application).
Run adb install myproject/bin/.apk to upload
the executable. So, for example, to install the Lunar Lander sample, navigate
in the command line to /sample/LunarLander and type ../../tools/adb install bin/LunarLander.apk
In the emulator, open the list of available applications, and scroll down to
select and start your application.
Note: When you install an Activity for the
first time, you might have to restart the emulator before it shows up in the
application launcher, or other applications can call it. This is because
the package manager usually only examines manifests completely on emulator
startup.
Attaching a Debugger to Your Application
This section describes how to display debug information on the screen (such
as CPU usage), as well as how to hook up your IDE to debug running applications
on the emulator.
Attaching a debugger is automated using the Eclipse plugin,
but you can configure other IDEs to listen on a debugging port to receive debugging
information.
Start the , which
acts as a port forwarding service between your IDE and the emulator.
Set
optional debugging configurations on
your emulator, such as blocking application startup for an activity
until a debugger is attached. Note that many of these debugging options
can be used without DDMS, such as displaying CPU usage or screen refresh
rate on the emulator.
Configure your IDE to attach to port 8700 for debugging. We
include information on .
Configuring your IDE to attach to the debugging port
DDMS will assign a specific debugging port to every virtual machine that it
finds on the emulator. You must either attach your IDE to that
port (listed on the Info tab for that VM), or you can use a default port 8700
to connect to whatever application is currently selected on the list of discovered
virtual machines.
Your IDE should attach to your application running on the emulator, showing you
its threads and allowing you to suspend them, inspect their state, and set breakpoints.
If you selected "Wait for debugger" in the Development settings panel
the application will run when Eclipse connects, so you will need to set any breakpoints
you want before connecting.
Changing either the application being debugged or the "Wait for debugger"
option causes the system to kill the selected application if it is currently
running. You can use this to kill your application if it is in a bad state
by simply going to the settings and toggling the checkbox.
Debugging
Android has a fairly extensive set of tools to help you debug your programs:
- A graphical program that
supports port forwarding (so you can set up breakpoints in your code in your
IDE), screen captures on the emulator, thread and stack information,
and many other features. You can also run logcat to retrieve your Log messages.
See the linked topic for more information.
- Dumps a log of system
messages. The messages include a stack trace when the emulator throws an error,
as well as Log messages. To run logcat, see the linked topic.
...
I/MemoryDealer( 763): MemoryDealer (this=0x54bda0): Creating 2621440 bytes heap at 0x438db000
I/Logger( 1858): getView() requesting item number 0
I/Logger( 1858): getView() requesting item number 1
I/Logger( 1858): getView() requesting item number 2
D/ActivityManager( 763): Stopping: HistoryRecord{409dbb20 com.google.android.home.AllApps}
...
- A logging
class to print out messages to a log file on the emulator. You can read messages
in real time if you run logcat on DDMS (covered next). Add a few logging
method calls to your code.
To use the Log class, you just call Log.v()
(verbose), Log.d() (debug), Log.i() (information),
Log.w() (warning) or Log.e (error) depending
on the importance you wish to assign the log message.
Log.i("MyActivity", "MyClass.getView()
— Requesting item number " + position)
You can use logcat to read these messages
- Android can save
a log of method calls and times to a logging file that you can view in a
graphical reader called Traceview. See the linked topic for more information.
Eclipse plugin - The Eclipse
Android plugin incorporates a number of these tools (ADB, DDMS, logcat output,
and other functionality). See the linked topic for more information.
Debug and Test Device Settings - Android exposes several settings
that expose useful information such as CPU usage and frame rate. See below.
Also, see the section
of the doc to figure out why your application isn't appearing on the emulator,
or why it's not starting.
Debug and Test Settings on the Device
Android lets you set a number of settings that will make it easier to test
and debug your applications. To get to the development settings page on the emulator,
go to Dev Tools> Development Settings.
This will open the development settings page with the following options (among
others):
Debug app Selects the application that
will be debugged. You do not need to set this to attach a debugger, but setting
this value has two effects:
It will prevent Android from throwing an error if you pause on
a breakpoint for a long time while debugging.
It will enable you to select the Wait for Debugger option
to pause application startup until your debugger attaches (described
next).
Wait for debugger
Blocks the selected application from loading until a debugger attaches. This
way you can set a breakpoint in onCreate(), which is important to debug
the startup process of an Activity. When you change this option, any
currently running instances of the selected application will be killed.
In order to check this box, you must have selected a debug application
as described in the previous option. You can do the same thing by adding
to your code.
Immediately destroy activities Tells the
system to destroy an activity as soon as it is stopped (as if Android had to
reclaim memory). This is very useful for testing the
/ code path, which would
otherwise be difficult to force. Choosing this option will probably reveal
a number of problems in your application due to not saving state.
Show screen updates
Flashes a momentary pink rectangle on any screen sections that are being
redrawn. This is very useful for discovering unnecessary screen drawing.
Show CPU usage Displays CPU meters at the
top of the screen, showing how much the CPU is being used. The top red bar
shows overall CPU usage, and the green bar underneath it shows the CPU time
spent in compositing the screen. Note: You cannot turn this feature off
once it is on, without restarting the emulator.
Show background Displays a background pattern
when no activity screens are visible. This typically does not happen, but
can happen during debugging.
These settings will be remembered across emulator restarts.
Top Debugging Tips
Quick stack dumpTo obtain a stack dump from emulator, you can log
in with adb shell, use "ps" to find the process you
want, and then "kill -3 ". The stack trace appears in the log file.Displaying useful info on the emulator screenThe device can display useful information such as CPU usage or highlights
around redrawn areas. Turn these features on and off in the developer settings
window as described in .Getting system state information from the emulator (dumpstate)You can access dumpstate information from the Dalvik Debug Monitor Service
tool. See on the adb topic page.Getting application state information from the emulator (dumpsys)You can access dumpsys information from the Dalvik Debug Monitor Service
tool. See on the adb topic page.Getting wireless connectivity informationYou can get information about wireless connectivity using the Dalvik Debug
Monitor Service tool. From the Device menu, select "Dump
radio state".Logging Trace DataYou can log method calls and other tracing data in an activity by calling
android.os.Debug.startMethodTracing(). See for details.Logging Radio DataBy default, radio information is not logged to the system (it is a lot of
data). However, you can enable radio logging using the following commands:
adb shell
logcat -b radioRunning adbAndroid ships with a tool called adb that provides various capabilities, including
moving and syncing files to the emulator, forwarding ports, and running a UNIX
shell on the emulator. See for details.Getting screen captures from the emulatorDalvik Debug Monitor Server (DDMS) can capture screenshots from the emulator.Using debugging helper classesAndroid provides debug helper classes such as and for your convenience.
Building and Installing an Android Application
Android requires custom build tools to be able to properly build the resource
files and other parts of an Android application. Because of this, you must have
a specialized build environment for your application.
Custom
Android compilation steps include compiling the XML and other resource files, and creating
the proper output format. A compiled Android application is an .apk file, which
is a compressed file containing files, resource files, raw data files, and
other files. You can create a properly structured Android project either from
scratch, or from existing source files.
Android does not currently support development of third party applications in native code (C/C++).
The recommended way to develop an Android
application is to use Eclipse with the Android plugin,
which provides support for building, running, and debugging Android applications.
If you have another IDE, to build and debug Android applications,
but they are not as integrated.
Removing an Android Application
To remove an application that you have installed on the emulator, you will
need to and delete the .apk
file you sent to the emulator when you installed it. Use adb
shell to drop into a shell on the device as described in the linked
topic, navigate to data/app/, and then remove the file using
rm your_app.apk.
Eclipse Tips
Executing arbitrary Java expressions in Eclipse
You can execute arbitrary code when paused at a breakpoint in Eclipse. For example,
when in a function with a String argument called "zip", you can get
information about packages and call class methods. You can also invoke arbitrary
static methods: for example, entering android.os.Debug.startMethodTracing() will
start dmTrace.
Open a code execution window, select Window>Show
View>Display from the main menu to open the
Display window, a simple text editor. Type your expression, highlight the
text, and click the 'J' icon (or CTRL + SHIFT + D) to run your
code. The code runs in the context of the selected thread, which must be
stopped at a breakpoint or single-step point. (If you suspend the thread
manually, you have to single-step once; this doesn't work if the thread is
in Object.wait().)
If you are currently paused on a breakpoint, you can simply highlight and execute
a piece of source code by pressing CTRL + SHIFT + D.
You can highlight a block of text within the same scope by pressing ALT +SHIFT
+ UP ARROW to select larger and larger enclosing blocks, or DOWN ARROW to select
smaller blocks.
Here are a few sample inputs and responses in Eclipse using the Display window.
Input
Response
zip
(java.lang.String) /work/device/out/linux-x86-debug/android/app/android_sdk.zip
zip.endsWith(".zip")
(boolean) true
zip.endsWith(".jar")
(boolean) false
You can also execute arbitrary code when not debugging by using a scrapbook page.
Search the Eclipse documentation for "scrapbook".
Running DDMS Manually
Although
the recommended way to debug is to use the ADT plugin, you can manually
run DDMS and configure Eclipse to debug on port 8700. (Note:Be sure that you have first started ).