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AndroidSetup.md

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How to Set Up an Android Development Environment

If you'd like to contribute to the Android project, but do not currently have a development environment setup, follow the instructions in this guide.

Prerequisites

If you downloaded Android Studio, extract it and then see Setting up Android Studio.

If you instead chose to download the commoand-line SDK tools, see Setting up the SDK Tools.

Setting up Android Studio

  1. Launch Android Studio, which will start a first-launch wizard.
  2. Choose a custom installation.
  3. If offered a choice of themes, select your preference.
  4. When offered a choice of components, uncheck the "Android Virtual Device" option. Android Studio Components
  5. Accept all licenses, and click Finish. Android Studio will download the SDK Tools package automatically. (Ubuntu users, if you get an error running the mksdcard tool, make sure the lib32stdc++6 package is installed.)
  6. At the Android Studio welcome screen, click "Configure", then "SDK Manager".
  7. Use the SDK Manager to get necessary dependencies, as described in Getting Dependencies.
  8. When done, follow the steps in Readme.md to compile and deploy the application.

Setting up the SDK Tools

  1. In Source/Android, create a file called local.properties.
  2. Add a single line: sdk.dir=<sdk-path>, where <sdk-path> is the path where you extracted the SDK Tools package.
  3. Follow the steps in Readme.md to compile and deploy the application.

Executing Gradle Tasks

In Android Studio, you can find a list of possible Gradle tasks in a tray at the top right of the screen:

Gradle Tasks

Double clicking any of these tasks will execute it, and also add it to a short list in the main toolbar:

Gradle Task Shortcuts

Clicking the green triangle next to this list will execute the currently selected task.

For command-line users, any task may be executed with Source/Android/gradlew <task-name>.

Getting Dependencies

Most dependencies for the Android project are supplied by Gradle automatically. However, Android platform libraries (and a few Google-supplied supplementary libraries) must be downloaded through the Android package manager.

  1. Launch the Android SDK Manager from the commandline by executing <sdk-path>/tools/android, or by clicking on its icon in Android Studio's main toolbar: Android Studio Package Icon
  2. At the bottom of the window, click "Deselect All", and then "Updates".
  3. Install or update the following packages:
  • SDK Platform, under "Android 5.0.1 (API 21)". This will allow compiling apps that target Lollipop.
  • Android Support Repository
  • Android Support Library
  • Google Repository

In the future, if the project targets a newer version of Android, or use newer versions of the tools/build-tools packages, it will be necessary to use this tool to download updates.