Finally I found time to start looking at Android development. In the past I have been developing mobile applications on Java ME, Windows Mobile and Windows Phone 7, now it’s time to have a look at the Android platform. In this post I will describe what you need to do to get started with Android development.

At developers.android.com there is a good Quick Start guide explaining step by step what you need to do to get started:

1. Start with installing JDK 6
2. Download Eclipse Classic 3.6.1 and unzip it on your disk (I unzipped it to location c:\eclipse) Updated 9th Nov: There are know issues with the ADT plugin running on Eclipse 3.6, so to be safe download Eclipse 3.5. Thank you Robert Peterson for letting me know.
3. Download Android SDK (for Windows platform in my case) and unzip it on your disk (I unzipped it to location c:\android sdk)
4. Add the android sdk location to your path
5. Install the Android Development Tools (ADT) plugin in Eclipse. Remote update/install site: https://dl-ssl.google.com/android/eclipse/
6. Add Android platforms and components to your SDK by running the SDK Manager. I chose accept all and install, this will give me all available Android platforms and components including Google API, Usb driver, samples and documentation.

You have now installed all you need and you can now follow the steps below to create your Android project and run the application from Eclipse. Once again developers.android.com have a good tutorial on how to create Hello World application: Continue reading »

I have experienced that Eclipse hangs when I am trying to start it. I have figured out that this is due to a problem with my workspace. If you have the same issue you can try the following.

First open your task manager –> right click the javaw.exe process –> chose to end process tree (this will end all java processes running on your computer).

Then go to your Eclipse folder –> configuration\.settings and delete the org.eclipse.ui.ide.prefs file. Restart Eclipse and try opening your workspace again. This does the trick for me Beaware that deleting this file results in resetting your workspace history so when starting Eclipse you need to manually browse to your workspace location.

I have only experienced this issue when I am running Eclipse in my Windows XP image with a third party plug-in for Eclipse.