New to android dev

Question

I am new to android dev, own an HTC Eris Droid (OS = 1.5 or 1.6 I believe). I am primarily a Microsoft .NET developer and am trying to figure out where to start.

What dev IDEs are suggested. I've seen the droid dev site and they suggest Eclipse. But which one?

Will installing Eclipse and the JRE interfere with .NET development?

What else will I need to get started? My OS is Win7.

TIA

Answer 1

Will installing Eclipse and the JRE interfere with .NET development?

No.

Answer 2

For development you will need*:

• Java JDK - the JRE is not enough for Java development.
• Eclipse - it doesn't really matter which "package" you choose, but for your needs the basic (smallest) one should be enough.
• Android SDK + ADT

This should have no effect on .Net development, or on anything for that matter.

• You don't actually need Eclipse and ADT, but since you asked about IDEs...

Answer 3

The android developer site system requirements says any version of Eclipse after 3.3.

Eclipse uses plugins to support different configurations that's why www.eclipse.org/downloads/ has so many different versions - they're the core IDE with different plugin configurations.

I'd recommend the 'Eclipse IDE for Java Developers' as this will have what you need without too many bits you don't - you can install additional plugins easily.

Of course, you'll also need to add the Android SDK once you have Eclipse - this is a set of tools and plugins that work with Eclipse.

Installing Eclipse and the JRE (Although you want the JDK - The Development Kit rather than just the runtime) will not interfere with your .Net development.

Answer 4

This version of Eclipse should work fine. Just select a download mirror.

You probably already have the JRE installed, but you should install the JDK from here.

Then you need to get the Android SDK, and ADT

Answer 5

After you install the Android SDK, it may be useful to create multiple virtual devices using the included Android emulator running different versions of Android. This will help you to learn features included in Android up to version 2.1 instead of being limited to your current device running 1.x.

Answer 6

You also need the latest Ant build (1.7.1 I think) for de-bugging. Eclipse Java works great w/least space taken.Good luck.

Answer 7

As a .NET developer who has recently been looking at Android development, I can give you the steps I used:

1. Download Eclipse Classic 32-bit (as recommend by the Android docs) and extract it to a folder where it has write permissions (I use %homepath%\applications\eclipse\3.5\)
2. Download and extract the Android SDK to a permanent home and run SDK Setup.exe. Let it download/install all the packages
3. Add ANDROID_SDK_HOME\tools (expanded, obviously) to your %PATH% system environment variable in System Properties (WIN+BREAK)
4. Install the ADT (Android/Eclipse integration) plugin for Eclipse

Then to checkout the samples:

1. Create a workspace and a new Android project
2. Copy the contents of one of the samples (ANDROID_SDK_HOME\platforms\android-x.x\samples) into your project directory
3. Refresh your Eclipse view

I also strongly recommend checking out the Android Developer Guide and, in particular, reading the Application Fundamentals. It really gives a good overview of the terms used and the lifecycle of an application.

After that you can dive into the samples (installed by the SDK) with a little bit of clarity.