Chapter  2

Setting up your Development Environment

The last chapter provided an overview of Android's history and hinted at concepts that are covered in the rest of the book. At this point, you're probably eager to get your hands on some code. You start by seeing what you need to begin building applications with the Android software development kit (SDK) and set up your development environment. Next, you step through a “Hello World!” application. Then the chapter explains the Android application life cycle and ends with a discussion about running your applications with Android Virtual Devices (AVDs) and on real devices.

To build applications for Android, you need the Java SE Development Kit (JDK), the Android SDK, and a development environment. Strictly speaking, you can develop your applications using a primitive text editor, but for the purposes of this book, you use the commonly available Eclipse IDE. The Android SDK requires JDK 5 or JDK 6 (the examples use JDK 6) and Eclipse 3.5 or higher (this book uses Eclipse 3.5, also known as Galileo, and 3.6, also known as Helios)

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