Game Development Reference
In-Depth Information
3.
Eclipse for Java Developers, version 3.4 or newer.
4.
The Android Development Tools (ADT) plug-in for Eclipse.
Let's go through the steps required to set up everything properly.
Note As the Web is a moving target, we don't provide specific download URLs here. Fire up your
favorite search engine and find the appropriate places to get the items listed above.
Setting Up the JDK
Download the JDK with one of the specified versions for your operating system. On most
systems, the JDK comes in an installer or package, so there shouldn't be any hurdles. Once you
have installed the JDK, you should add a new environment variable called JDK_HOME pointing to
the root directory of the JDK installation. Additionally, you should add the $JDK_HOME/bin ( %JDK_
HOME%\bin on Windows) directory to your PATH environment variable.
Setting Up the Android SDK
The Android SDK is also available for the three mainstream desktop operating systems. Choose
the version for your platform and download it. The SDK comes in the form of a ZIP or tar gzip
file. Just uncompress it to a convenient folder (for example, c:\android-sdk on Windows or
/opt/android-sdk on Linux). The SDK comes with several command-line utilities located in the
tools/ folder. Create an environment variable called ANDROID_HOME pointing to the root directory
of the SDK installation, and add $ANDROID_HOME/tools ( %ANDROID_HOME%\tools on Windows) to
your PATH environment variable. This way you can easily invoke the command-line tools from a
shell later on if the need arises.
Note
For Windows you can also download a proper installer that will set up things for you.
After performing the preceding steps, you'll have a bare-bones installation that consists of the
basic command-line tools needed to create, compile, and deploy Android projects, as well as
the SDK Manager, a tool for installing SDK components, and the AVD Manager, responsible
for creating virtual devices used by the emulator. These tools alone are not sufficient to start
developing, so you need to install additional components. That's where the SDK manager comes
in. The manager is a package manager, much like the package management tools you find on
Linux. The manager allows you to install the following types of components:
Android platforms : For every official Android release, there's a platform
component for the SDK that includes the runtime libraries, a system image used
by the emulator, and any version-specific tools.
 
 
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