Visual Studio Development with Mono for Android

This section covers developing a basic “Hello Android” application for your Android device working with the Android plug-in for Visual Studio 2010. You start by setting up a new Mono for Android project in Visual Studio and then follow through with building and debugging the application. After that you add some logging and unit tests to the project before deploying the application to a physical device.

Although some of the specifics are focused on Visual Studio, everyone is encouraged to read this section, as it explains some aspects of Android and Mono for Android that are not covered in the section specifically geared toward development with MonoDevelop.

General Setup

The first thing you do is create the new application in Visual Studio. Start Visual Studio 2010 and select File ? New ? Project. When the New Project dialog appears, select Mono for Android Application from the available C# templates, as shown in Figure 2.5. In the Name field, type HelloAndroid. That will also appear as the solution name. Then click OK. Your project opens to Activity1.cs.