MOUNTING AN ANDROID DEVELOPMENT ENVIRONMENT

Hello readers! Already in 2012 ... new year, new life ... and why not learn something new? Today I will show you how to set up an Android development environment ! For those who have never heard (???), Android is a Google operating system for mobile devices. Nowadays, millions of phones and tablets use Android as a system.

One cool thing is that you can make your apps available on the Android Market (after paying a fee) and maybe even make some money from it! Not cool?

The development of applications for Android is done using the Java language , with the use of XML files for the creation of interfaces. Although it sounds complex, it's relatively simple to build your applications. In addition, it is very easy to have access to several features generally available on mobile devices such as camera, GPS, Bluetooth, etc.

To facilitate the development, a plug-in for Eclipse has been created . Through it, it's easy to manage platforms (different versions of Android) and virtual machines to run your applications.

Well, so to begin with, we're going to download JDK . If you already program in Java, this step is not necessary. As I write this tutorial, the latest version is Java 7 update 2 . Go to thispage and download.

The installation should occur without problems (the famous, next , next , next , finish ). The next step is to download Eclipse . Go to this page and download related version of your operating system. For our purposes, the Eclipse IDE for Java Developers should suffice.

When you finish downloading, simply unzip the file somewhere on your machine. I recommend, in the case of Windows, in the C: root or in your user folder ( C: \ Users \ <Your User> ). In this example, I'll reference the Eclipse folder as C: \ eclipse .

Proceeding, we should now download the Android SDK . It is he who will provide us with all platform tools, such as emulator, libraries, etc. Go to this page and download the version zipped SDK (although recommend the version "installable") - this is to avoid permission problems when you download the SDKs, if the system program folder ( Program Files or File Programs ). At the time of writing this post, the latest version is at 16 .

After the download is complete, unzip the file (it can be in the same place where you put Eclipse). Here, for example, will get C: \ android-sdk-windows . After extracting, we will run the SDK Manager to download an SDK to start programming. When running for the first time, the SDK Manager will check the Android repositories for the latest versions of the SDK.

To begin with, let's download the SDK from version 2.2 , since the applications developed on it work on the vast majority of Android devices today. If you want to install other versions, feel free to. Expand the Android 2.2 folder (API 8) and check the SDK Platform options . Also, in the Tools category , check the Android SDK Platform-tools option . Click Install 2 packages ... (or else, if you selected anything else), check Accept All and then click Install .

After the downloads are complete, it's time to configure Eclipse. Go to the directory where it was unzipped and run it.

When asked which workspace to use, just confirm and use the default ( workspace is where your projects will be saved). Let's now add the plugin to integrate SDK Manager and AVD Manager with Eclipse. Click the Help menu -> Install New Software ... and in the window that opens, click the Add ... button . On the next screen, fill in the name of the plugin ( ADT Plugin ) and enter the address https://dl-ssl.google.com/android/eclipse , as shown below:

Click OK and wait for the repository to load. When finished, check the Developer Tools box and click Next> twice. On the next screen, accept the license terms and click Finish . Now wait for the installation, and if you are alerted about unsigned content, click OK to continue.

At the end, click Restart Now to restart Eclipse and complete the installation. The next step is to configure where the SDKs are. In Eclipse, go to the Window -> Preferences menu . Click the Browse ... button and point to the folder that you unzipped. After confirmation, you should see the SDKs you downloaded.

Ready! Your Android environment is now ready to be used! In the next post, we'll see how to make a Hello World and configure a device to run our application. Until then!