Android Development Model

Info Box Applies to Android

Introduction

To develop apps for Android devices, you need a set of tools that are included in the Android SDK. Once you've downloaded and installed the SDK, you can access these tools right from your Eclipse IDE (the recommended method), through the ADT plugin, or from the command line, or another IDE (eg: NetBeans).

The following picture shows the typical development workflow:

For further information, please visit https://developer.android.com/tools/workflow/index.html

Development tools

Before starting, make sure you can match the following prerequisites:

• Windows (XP, Vista or 7), Mac OS X (10.5.8 or later) or Linux (tested on Ubuntu Linux, Lucid Lynx) development host
• Eclipse IDE 3.6.2 (Helios) or greater installed on the development host
• Eclipse JDT plugin (included in most Eclipse IDE packages)
• JDK 6 (JRE alone is not sufficient)
• Basic experience with Eclipse IDE
• Good knowledge of Java language

In order to start development of your Android “Apps”, first of all you should download and install the Android SDK (http://developer.android.com/sdk/index.html). Please follow the instructions reported on http://developer.android.com/sdk/installing.html in order to properly install the SDK. If you want to use Eclipse as IDE, you should also install the Android Development Tools (ADT) Plugin (please find here the related instructions: http://developer.android.com/sdk/eclipse-adt.html#installing).

Eclipse with ADT plugin

An overview of the SDK can be found here: http://developer.android.com/sdk/exploring.html

A lot of information on how to start programming can be found here: http://developer.android.com/guide/developing/index.html.

Useful Links

Android Developer Website

First project tutorial

Notes

Portions of this page are reproduced from work created and shared by the Android Open Source Project and used according to terms described in the Creative Commons 2.5 Attribution License.