V Hack Android Wiki

We don't want to waste time on hassles that can easily consume an hour at worst, so please prepare:

For beginning Android devs[]

We implore you to please set up your development environment and study the resources available to you in advance. In essence this means following the Android SDK instructions and reading up on that website. There's not much you can do the weekend if you still have to do all this Saturday morning. Trust us, we know this from experience.

As setting up all the necessary tools can be daunting here is my setup that works pretty good together and is quite stable:

  • Gentoo Linux 2.6.36
  • git 1.7.3.4
  • Bazaar (bzr) 2.2.2
  • Java 1.6.0_29
  • Python 2.6.6
  • a modern browser such as Opera
  • Eclipse IDE 3.7.1 (Indigo, Build id: I20110909-1335), including the following plugins:
    • ADT plugins: Dalvik Debug Monitor Service, Traceview, Hierarchy Viewer 16.0.1.v201112150204-238534. Configure this in the Eclipse preferences.
    • MOTODEV Studio 3.1.0.release - 3.1.1 (Build id: 201220110119) with MOTODEV Studio App Validator Tool 1.0.0.release (Build id: 201220110119) http://developer.motorola.com/docstools/motodevstudio/ (optional)
    • Eclipse Memory Analyzer 1.1.1.201108240735 (Build id: 1.1.1) (optional)
  • Android SDK, and then in the Android SDK manager ('android' tool):
    • Android SDK Tools 16
    • Android SDK Platform-tools 10
    • Android Compatibility package
    • As for API versions you will absolutely certain require: API 14 (+docs), 10, 8
    • Also interesting might be: API 15, 13, 12, 9, 7 (optional)
    • You might also want to link to the Android source (now also available via 'android' tool) (optional)
    • Create matching emulators and check that they work.
  • If you have an Android phone set it up for degugging and get a sample app to work on it. You need to install the samples from the matching Android version in the 'android' tool, use Eclipse to create a sample project, compile and run it. First, enable debugging etc in the Settings app on your phone and install the USB driver for Windows if you use Windows.