Android™ 3 SDK Programming For Dummies®

Chapter 2

Setting Up an Android Development Environment

In This Chapter

• Setting up your development environment
• Importing and building the sample application
• Running the application on an Android emulator
• Installing and running the application on an Android device

An Android application is developed and tested on a computer running Windows, Mac OS X, or Linux and then installed on an Android device for further testing, or for real-world use. This chapter walks you through the tools you need to have on your computer and helps you start using them. We use our sample Tic-Tac-Toe application in this chapter as well.

Android applications are mostly developed in Java. (If you're a glutton for punishment — as some of us freely admit that we are — you can develop Android applications in C or C++ instead, but we don't cover that topic in this book.) Also, if you're a Java purist, you can just use a text editor and the command line interface (CLI) to do your development.

Nowadays, however, most folks like to make their lives a little easier (or at least that's the story the software tool developers want developers to believe), so they use an integrated development environment (IDE) for their Java development. The most widely accepted IDE in the Java developer community is Eclipse. Also, the Open Handset Alliance (in particular, Google) has provided a set of tools that can be integrated into Eclipse that significantly helps with Java development for Android. These tools include the Android ...