Setup Android Environment for Development

Finally, it's a showdown time. It's time to develop your own Android Applications. But wait, where are you going to type your code? You need some environment to develop your apps. Therefore, first you will be required to download the necessary tools, SDKs and setup files to setup the environment for development. You can use a macOS, Windows or a Linux platform for your Android Application Development. All required packages, tools and other required files can be downloaded from the internet. Following are the names of the files, along with their descriptions that you will be required for developing Android apps.

Java Development Kit(JDK)

Android SDK works on Java SE Development Kit(JDK). Therefore, first your system must have JDK installed. If you don't have it on your system, you can download it from here.

Note: Make sure you download proper JDK based upon your system configurations as there are separate setup files for macOS, Windows and Linux platform.

So the first requirement for setting up the environment is that JDK must be installed on your system. Once you are done with this, you can go for the next step.

Note: Once you have installed JDK, you will also have to set PATH and JAVA_HOME variables. Usually, this is done automatically by the system. Still If you face any problem regarding this, you can read more about it here.

Android SDK/Android Studio/Eclipse

Next comes Android SDK. It contains libraries, debugger, an emulator, documentations, sample codes and tutorials for each API level of the released versions of Android.

Note: Before the release of Android Studio, SDK was a standalone part of the Android Application development tools that could be integrated with other IDE's like Eclipse with the help of Android ADT Bundle. Later on, Google made Android SDK as a part of the Android Studio, which is the official IDE for Android development.

You can download the complete Android Development Environment bundle(Android Studio + SDK) from the link here.

Setup and Installation of Android Studio

Once you have finished with installing JDK and downloading Android Studio IDE setup file, double click on the .exe file (setup file) of the Android Studio. It'll prepare the file for setup and will ask you for the location where you want to install it, as shown in image below.

Select an appropriate location and click on Next button.

Click on Install button. It will start installing as shown below.

Click on Next button.

Android Studio has been installed directly and it is ready for use. Click on finish button and Android Studio will open.

Note: If you have installed any previous version of Android Studio, Android Studio setup will first remove your previous version and then it will install the new one, as shown in the images below. Settings and Configurations are not deleted in this process.

Android Studio will automatically get the location of the Android SDK if it is in the same location as itself. But if it fails to discover, then it'll ask you to browse to the Android SDK's location.

In the next tutorial, we will talk about the Android SDK manager and the additional packages required in the SDK manager to complete the system setup for development.