Android SDK installation and first App

There are many tutorials on installing Java and Eclipse around, so there is not much to say about Eclipse proper, but I list here a few notes about installing Eclipse the Android SDK on Eclipse and my first Android application.

Eclipse installation

Download Eclipse from Website: http://www.eclipse.org/downloads/

Select Eclipse IDE for Java EE Developers
Current version at this time is: Eclipse Indigo (3.7.2)

Unzip the software (e.g., the downloaded file: eclipse-jee-indigo-SR2-win32(-x86_64).zip) into an appropriate location on your hard disk (e.g., C:\Apps\eclipse). Make sure that you do not install eclipse on your “Program Files” folder. That can give you problems in the future, even more so if you have Windows 7. The restricted environment of Windows 7 will not allow Eclipse to function properly if installed on a sub-folder of “Program Files”.

Eclipse is ready to run:

Run Eclipse by clicking “C:\Apps\eclipse\eclipse.exe”

The first time you run Eclipse, you will be prompted to identify a location for your Eclipse workspace. This is where local copies of your projects (files you check in and/or out of code repositories) will live on your file system. You could create the class workspace as a subdirectory of your class folder, as long as it is not on anything with a name such as “Documents and Settings”.

One such folder could be called: “C:\Users\<userName>\Documents\FAU\COT6930\workspace”

Android SDK Installation

I’ve chosen to install the Android SDK instead of MotoDev to become more familiar with the Android Components environment.

I did encounter problems with the presence of Java 7 installed on my computer that did not allow for the Eclipse update process. I describe the details of Java 7 conflict on this post.

It took me some searching to discover that there were multiple consoles running on Eclipse until I was able to display the Android console with the processing progression.

Notes on the first application

The first application was surprisingly easy to produce following the instructions on the step 5 of the Android Installation Tutorial.

After running it the first time, I added the following item on the main.xml file:

<TextView
    android:layout_width="fill_parent"
    android:layout_height="wrap_content"
    android:text="@string/author" />

Then I added the following on the strings.xml file:

<string name="author">By: Gabriel Novak</string>

When running the application, the following displayed:

My First Android App