Getting your Android environment ready in Ubuntu

Devving Android apps is easy, and setting up the environment to do so on a Ubuntu machine is also very simple.

Java

Android apps are devved in Java so you need Java installed.

Eclipse

Eclipse is the IDE program you are going to use to devv Android apps. Three ways to get Eclipse:

This will get you the official release of Eclipse for your Ubuntu version. Like this you know you don't have dependencies issues nor safety breaches. Downside is that you don't get the latest version of Eclipse.

You can download latest stable version of Eclipse directly from their web site. At the time of writing, latest is Eclipse Classic 3.7.1 Indigo.

Also, there is a PPA for Eclipse.

Android SDK

Now you need the phone emulator. Download it here. I recommand you decompress it in /opt/sdk/android and then from terminal

Then just type 'android-sdk' on your terminal and it opens the emulator. On the left menu, click 'Available Packages'. Download all the packages.

Connect the SDK with Eclipse

Now open Eclipse and

1. go to Help > Install New Software
2. click the link 'Available Software Sites'
3. click on the 'Add' button
4. In the Name field, enter the value 'Android Development Tools'
5. In the Location field, enter the value 'https://dl-ssl.google.com/android/eclipse'
6. click 'Ok'
7. in the Work With field, enter 'android'
8. hit Enter
9. check the checkbox next to 'Developer Tools'
10. click 'Next'
11. click 'Next' again
12. accept the Terms of User and click 'Finish'
13. restart Eclipse
14. go to Windows > Preferences > Android
15. in the left menu, click on 'Android'
16. In the SDK Location field, enter the path to where you have installed Android SDK, ie '/opt/sdk/android'

That's it!