[n00b] Setting up PC for Android coding/learning

nomdeboardie

Greetings MobileMeisters

[Mods: If this would be better in the busier “Development” sub-forum, feel free to move]

I’d like to try a little Android coding/learning, so need to set up a ‘development environment’ (if that’s the correct phrase) on my Windows PC. (I’d probably try to adapt a couple of progs I made in Java and HTML-JavaScript first.) Musings on the best way to do this below – any opinions welcome


I realise there are countless sources of advice on setup and coding*, but first want to decide which IDE to use and take things from there.
(*One site seemed to take ~70 screens-worth of text and images to describe how to make a Hello World app!)

I’m already using NetBeans for Java. On the one hand it would be nice to just use that for Android also, but I’m open to installing Eclipse or Android Studio as it might not be a bad thing to get experience with one of these, and perhaps be less messy to keep my Android projects separate at first and avoid any risk of messing up my NetBeans installation(?) Perhaps Android Studio would be best for me at the moment?


Based on https://www3.ntu.edu.sg/home/ehchua/programming/android/Android_HowTo.html (ref1)
if going to use Android Studio https://developer.android.com/studio/index.html (ref2) as IDE, I’ll also need...

JDK:
– Already have both versions 7 and 8, with the former in my path & classpath as I’m studying for Java 7 Professional cert at the moment
-- If I use Android Studio as IDE, will I need to hook it up to version 8 rather than 7 (ref2 specifies the former)? If so, will this interfere with use of version 7 for Java?

Android SDK:
-- There’s an option to include this with the Android Studio download/installation (ref2), so I would take that

Android Emulator (virtual device, to allow testing code on PC):
-- According to ref1, this needs to be installed as an additional Android SDK package(?), along with other extra Android SDK packages(?)
-- ...though I think it will be included with Android Studio (ref2)?

These components would also be needed if using any other IDE, of course. If I instead went with NetBeans, I might follow advice here http://forums.netbeans.org/topic51543.html ?

jester77

Android Studio is the only real supported IDE now. The others will have plugins but they will not be officially supported and not up to date. Plus Android Studio is built on IntelliJ, so you are getting one of the best IDEs that is out there.

JDK 7 is fine, you won't be able to use the jdk8 features anyway without limiting yourself to the latest release which very few devices would have.

The default emulator is fine, it is actually ok now compared to earlier releases. Some things may not by possible or easy. If you want to run some proxy tools like Charles then it doesn't work. GenyMotion is also a very good alternative. You need to set up the device images yourself in these tools, but that is very easy.

nomdeboardie

Thanks, jester77

(I assume I will be able to choose my JDK7 when I install Android Studio - will cross that bridge when I come to it )

jester77

nomdeboardie wrote: »

Thanks, jester77

(I assume I will be able to choose my JDK7 when I install Android Studio - will cross that bridge when I come to it )

I haven't used windows in years, but I presume that once you have JAVA_HOME setup and the jdk bin folder in your classpath then you will be ok.

You can then specify the jdk version for each project in its build.gradle