Get start with Android apps development

Android is an open source operating system based on Linux kernel. It is found in millions of mobile devices such as Galaxy smart phones and tablets.

Android provides tools and libraries so that you can develop apps in mobile environment fast and easy. For example, Android SDK is a crucial tool that most Android developers use to write, debug, compile, and run the Android apps. Furthermore, this tool provides SDK download manager that allows you to download useful libraries, samples and more from the web. Android allows the developers to use a rich set of libraries such as libraries for creating apps interface, accessing files and databases, communicating with other devices and accessing the network resources, etc.

The fundamental programming language used in Android apps development is Java. Therefore, programmers that have previous experience with Java programming language can learn apps development faster than people who are new to Java. If you are new to Java, you can check this tutorial to learn the basic things about Java. If you want to look for free Java programs source code, please check this java programs blog.

What will you need?

I am a Window user so i will talk about developing Android apps in Windows operating systems. Firstly you will have Java SE installed in your computer. You can visit its official website to download the file. If you already have the Java SE installed, skip this step and move to download Android SDK. To develop apps for Android in Window operating systems, you need to download the Android SDK from its official Android website. This website allows you to download Android SDK for 32-bit or 64-bit Window platform. The download package is a zip file that contains every things that you need to develop Android apps. Then  extract the all files and directories in the zip file to place in a directory that you like.

In the directory that you placed the contents of the zip file, you will see three items as shown in the image above. The eclipse directory contains eclipse.exe file that you can double-click to open the eclipse program. You will create your Android projects with this program. The sdk directory contains samples, source code, and tools for Android development. The last item is a file called SDK manager.exe. It is used to open the Android SDK manager to download samples, source code, and tools for your projects.

In Windows, some people face a problem in launching the Android SDK manager. I faced too.

I spent more than an hour to solve this problem. If you have the same problem, the steps bellow can save your time:

1. Open the android.bat file in sdk directory

2. Look for this code:

rem Check we have a valid Java.exe in the path.

set java_exe=

call lib\find_java.bat

if not defined java_exe goto :EOF

3. Replace this code with the code below:

rem Check we have a valid Java.exe in the path.

set java_exe=C:\Windows\System32\java.exe

rem call lib\find_java.bat

if not defined java_exe goto :EOF

4 Look for this code:

rem Set SWT.Jar path based on current architecture (x86 or x86_64)

for /f %%a in ('%java_exe% -jar lib\archquery.jar') do set swt_path=lib\%%a

5. Replace this code with the code below:

rem Set SWT.Jar path based on current architecture (x86 or x86_64)

rem for /f %%a in ('%java_exe% -jar lib\archquery.jar') do set swt_path=lib\x86

set swt_path=lib\x86

If your Window is 64-bit, please change x86 to x86_64.

6. Finally, run the android.bat and SDK Manager again.

Now every thing is fine. You can start developing apps for Android mobile devices.

If you have any problem, you are encouraged to leave comments. I will reply as soon as possible.

Thank you for reading this post.