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Best Development Environment (IDE) for Android

Just downloaded the SDK 1.0 from
http://code.google.com/android
But now i learnt it also Require IDE Integrated Development Environment to Develop Application for Android Phones.
I think there are 2 IDE available
Eclipse 3.4 or JDK 6
Which is the Best IDE so i can started Developing Application for Google Android OS ?

I would recommend to go for Eclipse. Much better user support and bigger community. So once you've got questions the probability to find answers with Eclipse is higher, imo.

JDK 6 is not IDE, its java development kit, and it needed to create android apps.
I'd recomend use intellij idea, cuz eclipse is quite unstable and too complex.

Eclipse is the only IDE that supports Android development at the moment.

new development ide for android
I am currently working on a new IDE – 'Meme IDE' for ANDROID, WM and Apple IOS.
Here is the link to the hello world video I made.
http://vimeo.com/20599586
It is planned to launch in april as its not quite finished yet but it works! and the plan is to make the design and deployment of cross platform apps more efficient while protecting functional depth in each.
Have a look and let me know what you think.
Joe

Lol!!! Depends on what OS you are running!(Windows) Eclipse is perfectly stable and u dont install it, it runs standalone! I am a IT major in College and have gone to programming competitions where they prefer you to use Eclipse over Netbeans, JGrasp, etc for java based languages. And you need all of it. the JDK, Eclipse, and Android SDK. JDK == java development kit, eclipse is your program to create code in and the android SDK is where essentially where all the different types of methods are like in the JDK but specifically designed for the Android Operating System. You should use Eclipse bc it has intellisence and since you dont know what an IDE is, not to be mean or anything, you should do more research before jumping into it because you will get overwhelmed quickly.

I'll give a try to meme!!

Great response. Very clear and concise and put it all in perspective for me! Thanks so much for this advice.
Cheers, Mike
Delete please... I forgot to quote post I was referring to...see next post! cheers, Mike

Nice concise helpful response - thanks
jr10000 said:
Lol!!! Depends on what OS you are running!(Windows) Eclipse is perfectly stable and u dont install it, it runs standalone! I am a IT major in College and have gone to programming competitions where they prefer you to use Eclipse over Netbeans, JGrasp, etc for java based languages. And you need all of it. the JDK, Eclipse, and Android SDK. JDK == java development kit, eclipse is your program to create code in and the android SDK is where essentially where all the different types of methods are like in the JDK but specifically designed for the Android Operating System. You should use Eclipse bc it has intellisence and since you dont know what an IDE is, not to be mean or anything, you should do more research before jumping into it because you will get overwhelmed quickly.
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Great response. Very clear and concise and put it all in perspective for me! Thanks so much for this advice.
Cheers, Mike

programming on g tab

First of all, when I searched for doing programming on an android device, I got a kazillion results on programming an android app. I don't want that. Currently, what are the languages that I can write and compile on an android device? Is java one of these?

I've always wondered why noone has posted a static gcc build for android. gcc g++ gcj, they all should cross compile. You might have to enable swap to use them though.

Android basically runs Java. That's the simple answer.
You might find some interesting reading on Eclipse with the google plugins.
If WYSIWYG/RAD environments are more to your liking, check out the "google app inventor."

goodintentions said:
First of all, when I searched for doing programming on an android device, I got a kazillion results on programming an android app. I don't want that. Currently, what are the languages that I can write and compile on an android device? Is java one of these?
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
http://forum.xda-developers.com/forumdisplay.php?f=613

Um, guys, I said I don't care about building apps. I wanted to know if I could write and compile java on an android tablet.

Not quite java...
First, Android doesn't *quite* run Java. It runs Dalvik. That's a tweaked version of Java to help google not use the lawsuit with Sun/Oracle. There's a preprocessor you have to run over he Java bytecodes to get Dalvik code. This is why you can't simply port (or rather, build, given that there's a Linux under there) gcj and use it as is - you need the jvm->Dalvik translator.
The good news is - that runs on Android. There's a Clojure (a JVM/.net language) port for android that uses that translator to run code. While it's not up to building production code, it's fine for writing/testing code on android. I assume the JRuby port also uses it.
If all you're interested in is programming on a g tab, there's lots of options, most notably Google SL4A package (python, ruby, beanshell, sh - I think). But you can find Scheme, BrainF*ck, Pascal, Basic, etc. No Java, but I found at least three languages that run on the Dalvik VM (Clojure, JRuby, and Frink) that let you access some or all of the Android APIs. If you want to explore the Android APIs, one of these will probably work.
Finally, there's IDEDroid. That runs locally, but looks like it exports the compile and execution to their web server. It has support for lots (and lots and lots) of languages - including Java. If you just want edit/run small programs to play with the language, this might be just the ticket. I think I'm going to install it so I can play with haskell....

I wonder. Why in the world hasn't anyone developed a way to write and compile java code on android?

GNU has gcj, I'm fairly certain the same tools you use to compile a kernel would work to make an ARM/Android version.

muqali said:
GNU has gcj, I'm fairly certain the same tools you use to compile a kernel would work to make an ARM/Android version.
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Could you please clarify? I guess I'm seeing the potential to incorporate the gtab into my work at the lab. Let just say we're a bunch of engineers trying to act like IT programmers. Why hire an honest to god programmer when you could have your engineers lose sleep over trying to program the machines?
So, please could you stop giving me single sentence answers? If I get the gtab will I be able to use it to write, debug, compile, etc. java codes? We've been doing our own things with java and it's too late to switch to something else. I'm sure it's possible, I'm just having trouble finding the answer in search as it seems noone has ever brought this up before. Ever.
Would the following be what I'm looking for?
http://www.getjar.com/mobile/38541/java-programming-for-android-os-all/

So, I take it that it is not possible to write, debug, and compile java code on an android tablet?

goodintentions said:
So, I take it that it is not possible to write, debug, and compile java code on an android tablet?
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I did mis-understand you initial post on my first reply.
Now that I understand you question, I'm a bit baffled as to 'Why?'
A tablet just doesn't seem to be a very conducive platform to entering and compiling code.
I don't know about any development tools meant to run on android directly. But there are people running ubuntu on their tablets.

Zaphod-Beeblebrox said:
I did mis-understand you initial post on my first reply.
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I don't understand how you could have misunderstood my original post. Here it is.
I said, and I quote:
First of all, when I searched for doing programming on an android device, I got a kazillion results on programming an android app. I don't want that. Currently, what are the languages that I can write and compile on an android device? Is java one of these?
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
I don't how else I can make it clearer. I'm an engineer, not an idiot. A simple google search turned up millions of links to how to manage android projects on a pc. Why in the world would I be asking this? And I even said I google searched and it turned up nothing.
Now that I understand you question, I'm a bit baffled as to 'Why?'
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For the sake of convienience... and to baffle my colleagues.
I don't know about any development tools meant to run on android directly. But there are people running ubuntu on their tablets.
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The whole point of having a tablet is its light weight and the touch screen. I'd like to be able to take it to meetings, take notes with a stylus, show colleagues basic autocad drawings, write and debug java codes for some of our projects, etc. This is not to say I want to use it as my main device. I will still be using either my laptop or my desktop for my projects, but having something like the viewsonic gtab to carry around and do these things seem cool to me.
I'm just baffled why there hasn't been an app development to run/compile java code on the android OS.

Here is a Online IDE that works pretty good (not for java): http://www.coderun.com/ide/
Or
This one will let you compile and run just about anything including java: http://ideone.com/

Sure glad I tried to help.
Prick.

Zaphod-Beeblebrox said:
Sure glad I tried to help.
Prick.
Click to expand...
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Yes, I'm a prick. I fully admit this. This attitude came from years of experience with 1337s online. When I first started getting into linux, and this was back in the days when there was no visual interface for installation and you had to type in a dozen commands for every step of the way while it asks you for the specific models of your peripherals, I searched for several days on solutions pertaining to a problem I ran into. After being fairly confident that there was no answer to it, I signed into a linux forum and asked about it. I got a couple one-liner answers that made no sense, a couple answers that assumed I was an idiot so they answered the wrong thing, and half a dozen "you're an idiot, go away" answers.
My first rule of thumb is if you could interpret a person's question at least 2 ways, then without further info assume the interpretation that doesn't include assuming the other person is an idiot. And this is for an obscure question. My original post clearly stated I was talking about debuging and compiling java on the android tablet itself. I specifically worded my question like that because I knew people were going to assume I was talking about the thing you assumed.
This 1337 attitude online is getting old.

the3dman said:
Here is a Online IDE that works pretty good (not for java): http://www.coderun.com/ide/
Or
This one will let you compile and run just about anything including java: http://ideone.com/
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
Thanks. I guess this is what I will have to go with for now. I'm sure I'm not the only one who has thought of this before. Surely, if you could run it on a linux distro such as ubuntu, then I'm sure it's possible to do the same thing on a different OS that runs on the same processor. Why in the world hasn't anyone come up with this yet?

goodintentions said:
Why in the world hasn't anyone come up with this yet?
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Click to collapse
Sounds like its up to you to save the day!

adampdx said:
Sounds like its up to you to save the day!
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Click to collapse
I'm a materials/structural engineer who's an amateur programmer. I practically live in my lab. Sure, the other engineers often look at my programming work with oohs and aahs, but I assure you they look like something put together by an idiot if you're a software engineer. Something like this is several miles above my head. Most of my work look like spaghetti code anyway.

goodintentions said:
I'm just baffled why there hasn't been an app development to run/compile java code on the android OS.
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B/c any real programmer would probably blow a hole in his head trying to write/debug code on a tablet.

HKChad said:
B/c any real programmer would probably blow a hole in his head trying to write/debug code on a tablet.
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Click to collapse
The same could be said about autocad, and yet there is an autocad app for it, given that the capabilities are limited.

I wanna be the guy! ...uhm, I mean... I wanna be a android developer!

So yeah... this hasn't been easy.
I'm not gonna spend time getting into my coding history... but I wanna expand to Android. Usually I'm able to just get myself to a point in which I can start writing code, and then from thereon I can learn whatever I need to learn... but that's based on languages where I have a compiler, or can even do most of my coding from notepad+/PFE... I won't say I'm used to things being simple, but getting into a new coding language as at least been generally direct enough so that I can dive nose first into some good 'ol T&E.
I keep hearing Eclipse being mentioned, but honestly the furthest I get before I'm confused is the Android SDK Manager (and it's megaton of downloads).
I just want to get to the point where I can start messing with values, strings, functions and see how much different it'll be from what I'm used to when I try to make key inputs trigger functions.

While I am not able to code myself, (I made the Hello World and that was it) I do have experience with the Android SDK due to some debugging I have needed to do.
Eclipse keeps being mentioned because it's the officially preferred IDE for Android, as it counts with an official plugin.
The sequence is the following.
1) Install the SDK.
2) Install the necessary modules. You should know what you're going to program in advance so that you Install the relevant ones.
3) Install Eclipse.
4) Install the ADT plugin for Eclipse (instructions can be found in the site, but it's basically adding a repository and installing its contents).
5) Code!

Logseman said:
While I am not able to code myself, (I made the Hello World and that was it) I do have experience with the Android SDK due to some debugging I have needed to do.
Eclipse keeps being mentioned because it's the officially preferred IDE for Android, as it counts with an official plugin.
The sequence is the following.
1) Install the SDK.
2) Install the necessary modules. You should know what you're going to program in advance so that you Install the relevant ones.
3) Install Eclipse.
4) Install the ADT plugin for Eclipse (instructions can be found in the site, but it's basically adding a repository and installing its contents).
5) Code!
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Click to collapse
What he said. This is the only way to get started. And buy a book, Amazon has some great ones that will get you started on what you need to do from start to finish. The coding is almost the easy part, but theres a lot more involved in making it "work" with Android. Eclipse/Android SDK is the only way to do that. Just launch the SDK and let it do its thing for a couple hours and you're good!

Where should I start if I wanted to start developing ROMs?

I have coding experience in C++ and windows programming languages, but I haven't a clue about android. I tried searching google and this forum for a good master thread or even a book, but haven't had much luck.
Can anyone help me out?

jojo54696 said:
I have coding experience in C++ and windows programming languages, but I haven't a clue about android. I tried searching google and this forum for a good master thread or even a book, but haven't had much luck.
Can anyone help me out?
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Click to collapse
same here
Hello I am new to xda and I would like to start developing new custom roms and kernels however I do not know where to start.
Just some background info about me:
I am 15 yrs old
I am have programmed in the following:
c++
visual basic
c#
asm
Java
javascript
html
android 2.2 framework
window phone 7 framework
xml
ios
XNA
I have done computer repair for people along with console repair
Tools I have used:
visual studio
android sdk
eclipse
dreamweaver
dev c++
Photoshop
appmobi xdk
phonegap xda
xcode iphone sdk
and some more
Phone I currently have:
evo 3d
I am a noob to making roms and I do not know how to start if someone could help me or point me into the right direction that would great. Thanks
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
that was my post and still no replys

First of all, learn and become comfortable with Java. If you're not comfortable with Java you're going to have some problems since besides the c libraries/kernel the android source is Java/XML.
Second, you need to decide if you're going to be messing with pre-built ROMs (or RUUs or whatever) or the actual AOSP. Actual AOSP is the actual source code but if you're modding a pre-built ROM you're going to have to also learn how to deal with smali code (which as far as I know is basically machine code [if you know what that is]).. Eris has a pretty good guide-in-progress which I'll find and post here later if I can.
It's a lot of work and a lot of looking and learning and not very clear. I have a lot of respect for the people who do it a lot I'm thinking of dabbling soon...
Edit:
here: http://teambamf.net/showthread.php/2793-Guide-Eris-s-Ultimate-Guide-to-ROM-ing-and-Porting

[Q] Which Language should I learn?

Hello all,
So this summer after my classes get out I was looking to pick up a programming language so that I can get an idea of how to develop apps and modify android ROMs on my own and I was wondering what the developer community would recommend?
I have a basic knowledge of unix commands and took a semester long class of C++ but that was several years ago. So which language would you all recommend? Any text-books or guides that I could purchase? Thanks for all of your valuable input.

TheEmpyre said:
Hello all,
So this summer after my classes get out I was looking to pick up a programming language so that I can get an idea of how to develop apps and modify android ROMs on my own and I was wondering what the developer community would recommend?
I have a basic knowledge of unix commands and took a semester long class of C++ but that was several years ago. So which language would you all recommend? Any text-books or guides that I could purchase? Thanks for all of your valuable input.
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
If you haven't learned java or XML learn lose since that is pretty much what almost all of android's base is coded on

Learn java
click thank ?☺ once I helped you
instagram: cwfei

TheEmpyre said:
Hello all,
So this summer after my classes get out I was looking to pick up a programming language so that I can get an idea of how to develop apps and modify android ROMs on my own and I was wondering what the developer community would recommend?
I have a basic knowledge of unix commands and took a semester long class of C++ but that was several years ago. So which language would you all recommend? Any text-books or guides that I could purchase? Thanks for all of your valuable input.
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
Hello, look for information in the eclipse ide for android web, there is plenty of info there

I thought you are asking about French, Spanish or something like that lol :cyclops:

cfmusicman said:
If you haven't learned java or XML learn lose since that is pretty much what almost all of android's base is coded on
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Then until now I always was wrong because I thought Android is based on Linux kernel (either 2.x or 3.x) and Linux's native coding language is C/C++, AFAIK

jwoegerbauer said:
Then until now I always was wrong because I thought Android is based on Linux kernel (either 2.x or 3.x) and Linux's native coding language is C/C++, AFAIK
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It is but the apps and frameworks are in java and XML

cfmusicman said:
It is but the apps and frameworks are in java and XML
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Click to collapse
Would there be much utility in learning C++ first before java if my main purpose is to code for android platform?
Sent from my HTC One X using Tapatalk 2

cfmusicman said:
It is but the apps and frameworks are in java and XML
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Click to collapse
Absolutely wrong. Android( a Linux derivat ) isn't Java. Hence an application written in Java never runs under Android.
TheEmpyre said:
Would there be much utility in learning C++ first before java if my main purpose is to code for android platform?
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
See here: http://www.linuxforums.org/forum/programming-scripting/72084-c-c-tutorials.html#post375466

Baltasar1 said:
Absolutely wrong. Android( a Linux derivat ) isn't Java. Hence an application written in Java never runs under Android.
See here: http://www.linuxforums.org/forum/programming-scripting/72084-c-c-tutorials.html#post375466
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
Thanks for the abundance of links. I take it you would recommend learning C++ first?
Sent from my Nexus 10 using Tapatalk HD

Baltasar1 said:
Absolutely wrong. Android( a Linux derivat ) isn't Java. Hence an application written in Java never runs under Android.
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
No, you are wrong because in Android, most of the things like apps (Which you see as the apk's) are written in Java, not only the apps on Google Play, but also the System apps like Camera, Dialer, Settings etc. The things which is written in C/C++ will be the native libraries and the Kernel, as it uses a modified Linux Kernel which in turn is written in C.
I don't understand on what authorities you say "An application written in Java never runs under Android" Seriously?! You really need to consult an App Developer and ask him which language he used for writing apps. Please don't mislead the OP.
@ OP - Learning C++ is good and you'll get an initial idea of programming structure and how it works and as C++ is based on OOP, learning Java won't be much hassle because it too is based on OOP. The fundamentals and structure will be the same, only some changes in the syntax, which you can easily pickup.
jwoegerbauer said:
Then until now I always was wrong because I thought Android is based on Linux kernel (either 2.x or 3.x) and Linux's native coding language is C/C++, AFAIK
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
You are actually right over there because indeed Android's kernel is based on Linux kernel which is being modified by Google and is written in C. Its not just a raw Linux kernel downloadable from kernel.org and those are being modified by Google in order to work with Android. If you check the kernel version you get an initial idea because the latest Linux Kernel version is 3.9.x and the latest Google modified Linux kernel which is used in devices (Introduced in Nexus 4) is 3.4.x. There are explanations from Google's side why they are not using Linux Foundation's latest kernel versions.
cfmusicman said:
It is but the apps and frameworks are in java and XML
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Click to collapse
True that. :good: