Ritesh Nadhani

Installing and developing Android applications on command line in OS X

July 4, 2012

Who wants Eclipse when you can use vim like a vimmer. This document will help you get ready and develop Android applications from command line.

As usual, without saying - if you have not yet, Get Homebrew. This post also assumes that you have installed the command line tools from XCode and Ant.

Steps

Install Android SDK

brew install android-sdk

==> Downloading http://dl.google.com/android/android-sdk_r20-macosx.zip
######################################################################## 100.0%\
==> Caveats
Now run the `android' tool to install the actual SDK stuff.

The Android-SDK location for IDEs such as Eclipse, IntelliJ etc is:
  /usr/local/Cellar/android-sdk/r20

 you will have to install the platform-tools and docs every time this formula
 updates. if you want to try and fix this then see the comment in this formula.

 you may need to add the following to your .bashrc:
   export ANDROID_SDK_ROOT=/usr/local/Cellar/android-sdk/r20
   ==> Summary
   /usr/local/Cellar/android-sdk/r20: 444 files, 70M, built in 2.1 minutes

This will only install the Android SDK Manager. None of the actual SDK or anything is installed.

As suggested by Homebrewa, add the lines to your .bashrc. You can start the manager by typing android. Generally, I like to install a version from every major release (so that I can quickly debug things out if necessary). You can choose whichever version you want.

Bootstrap your project for specific target

Remember, we had installed multiple version of SDK. We have to setup an Android Virtual Device for it and setup the project for the target.

android list target

Available Android targets:
id: 1 or "android-10"
     Name: Android 2.3.3
     Type: Platform
     API level: 10
     Revision: 2
     Skins: HVGA, QVGA, WQVGA400, WQVGA432, WVGA800 (default), WVGA854
     ABIs : armeabi
id: 2 or "android-13"
     Name: Android 3.2
     Type: Platform
     API level: 13
     Revision: 1
     Skins: WXGA (default)
     ABIs : armeabi
id: 3 or "android-15"
     Name: Android 4.0.3
     Type: Platform
     API level: 15
     Revision: 3
     Skins: HVGA, QVGA, WQVGA400, WQVGA432, WSVGA, WVGA800 (default), WVGA854, WXGA720, WXGA800
     ABIs : armeabi-v7a
id: 4 or "android-16"
     Name: Android 4.1
     Type: Platform
     API level: 16
     Revision: 1
     Skins: HVGA, QVGA, WQVGA400, WQVGA432, WSVGA, WVGA800 (default), WVGA854, WXGA720, WXGA800, WXGA800-7in
     ABIs : armeabi-v7a

android create avd --target 1 --name yourprojectname

$: android create avd --target 1 --name param
Auto-selecting single ABI armeabi
Android 2.3.3 is a basic Android platform.
Do you wish to create a custom hardware profile [no]
Created AVD 'param' based on Android 2.3.3, ARM (armeabi) processor,
with the following hardware config:
hw.lcd.density=240
vm.heapSize=24
hw.ramSize=256

Now if its a new project, you can bootstrap one by using something like:

android create project --name HelloWorld --activity HelloWorld --path ./
--package com.examples.helloworld --target 1

If you already have an Eclipse build project and you want to start doing it right. Set it up using android update project --target 1 --path .

Now you can build it using ant debug or ant release and corresponding .apk file will be created.

Running in the emulator

Lets start up the avd that we created before. Assuming, you named your project “awesome”, we can start the emulator emulator -avd awesome.

Now we can install the above built packager using the Android Debug Bridge or adb by running adb install bin/awesome-debug.apk.

You should now see your new app in the applications list.

References