How to setup an android development environment

As we all know android is the most popular mobile operating system and every novice developer wants to master this technology to create some cool applications. The market value of android enabled smartphones has gone up in recent times not just because of android platform but its secure environment too.  In short and simple words android is the combination of two components:

  1. A open-source development platform for smartphone applications.
  2. And a free and open-source mobile operating system for smartphones.

In this article i mentioned the important steps to create an android development environment, so that any developer can easily setup their own android development environment by following some simple steps.  From beginner to an expert android developer, setting-up a complete android development environment is very important for development of android applications. Many developer uses various Operating systems like Windows, Mac(iOS) or Linux for their application environment.

Note:  Developers need to choose right Android SDK(software development kit) for creating android applications.

Now we will learn how and where to download the tools for a complete android development environment.  In this article we focuses on windows platform for setting up a complete android development environment, on the other hand the process for installing Android SDK on Mac or Linux systems is similar too.  Let’s take a look at the three basic steps to setup your android development environment. There are three major components of an Android Development Environment:

  1. Java
  2. Eclipse
  3. Android

Setup an Android Development Environment

Step 1.
Download Java(SE), as java is the foundation for android development environment. Java SE contains the core java programming language.
Go to this link:  http://www.oracle.com/technetwork/java/javase/downloads/index.html

  1. Click the “download jdk” button to start downloading Java SE Java development Kit(JDK).
  2. Then choose your platform from the drop down menu that appears, accepts the license.
  3. After that a binary file(dialog box) will pop-up on your screen, asking to save this binary file on your hard disk.

Note: Don’t Download Java platform, Enterprise Edition(EE), JavaFX or Java with NetBeans.

Step 2.
Download Eclipse(which is an Integrated Development Environment(IDE), a piece of software dedicated to allowing you to more easily write and run programming code).

Note: Currently Android requires the Galileo version of Eclipse(not Helios).

Go to this link: http://www.eclipse.org/downloads/packages/eclipse-ide-java-developers/junosr2

Step 3.
Download Android SDK
The Android Software Development Kit(SDK) is a collection of files and utilities that work hand in hand with the Eclipse IDE to create an Android specific development tool.

Go to this link: http://developer.android.com/sdk/index.html

Note:  Developers need to understand that above mentioned steps are detailed steps to setup an android development environment.  One can simply download ADT Bundle(for windows) to escape all these steps, where all these steps are pre-configured.  You just need to run an eclipse(IDE) and start building your android applications.

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