Using Eclipse IDE for Android App Development

In our previous tutorial, we learned about the Android SDK Manager. We hope you followed the tutorial and have successfully configured your system for application development. If not, then go check the previous tutorial for it.

As the title of this tutorial suggests, in this tutorial we will learn how to setup and use Eclipse IDE for Android development.

• If you have not yet installed Eclipse IDE, you can download it from here. Eclipse is one of the most popular IDE. It provides multi-language s/w development environment, with an extensible plugin system, that let us develop various applications using languages like Java, Ada, C, C++, COBOL, Python & others.
• When your download completes, unzip the folder at specific location where you want to install Eclipse IDE and double click on eclipse.exe file. It'll ask you to specify the location of your workspace, where all your projects will be stored. You can also take default suggestions and then click OK.
• After the Eclipse setup, we need to configure the ADT plugin in our Eclipse for Android Application Development. For that click on Help → Install New Software to install the Android Development Tools (ADT) plug-in for Eclipse. See below image for it.
• For Android development and debugging support in Eclipse, ADT Plugin is the extension. It provides features like,
  • Creating Android Application Projects.
  • Provide Tools to access Android Emulators and Devices.
  • Compile and Debug Android Application.
  • Export Android Application into APKs (Android Packages).
  • Creation of Digital Certificate for code-signing application APK.
• In the Install dialog window, specify https://dl-ssl.google.com/android/eclipse/ and press Enter. Eclipse will load and display all the available packages for download, in the middle of the window (as image below). Click on Developer Tools, to expand it and see its content: Android DDMS, Android Development Tools, Android Hierarchy Viewer and Android Traceview. Select(tick) all of them and click Next twice. It'll ask you to accept the licenses, accept it and click Finish. Once the installation completes it'll ask you to restart the Eclipse, so do it.
• After successful restart, you have to configure the path to the Android SDK Manager. On restart a window will appear, it will provide you with two options, either you can download & install SDK Manager or you can browse to the location of existing Android SDK Manager. Select appropriate option and click next. At the end you'll be asked to send your usage statistics to Google, select your choice and click Finish. That is it, now you will have these options and icons in eclipse toolbar (see image below).

So this is how you can configure ADT Plugin and configure Eclipse for Android Application Development.

DDMS Perspective

At the right corner of your Eclipse IDE, you will find DDMS option, click on it.

It will open a different view for you to debug your android application as image below. So to debug your application you can switch to this view. As displayed, left panel will have list of running emulators or connected devices. In the middle, it will have options like Threads, Heap, Allocation Tracker, Network Statistics, File Explorer, Emulator Control, System Information, Progress etc.

File Explorer will help you to browse through the content of the selected device in the left panel.

Emulator Control provides you the power to Make Test Call, Send Test Message, Control the Phone Location from it. So if your application is built to handle any of these functionalities, you can test it using DDMS.

There are lot of other options also, that you will get to know as you develop applications. To come back to the main JAVA view, click again on >> icon on right corner and select JAVA from the list.

Now you know how to set up Eclipse IDE for Android Application development and start app development with it. In our next lesson, we will learn about Android Studio & its features which is replacement for Eclipse from Google itself.