Getting Started with Android Development

Hello, Welcome to my blog Android Programming from Scratch. I'm Maaz Ahmed, I have Masters in Computer Science and I've been developing Android app for last few years. I'm starting this blog as an effort to make information/guide/tutorials easily available to new Android developers. 

Let's start this journey with the most basic guide 'How to install Android Studio'.

Installation guide on Ubuntu:

I am using Ubuntu 16.04 LTS but generally speaking this should work on Ubuntu 14.04 and onward as well as on any other Debian based distro.

First and the foremost thing you need is the JDK (Java Development Kit). You have two options when it comes to JDK on Ubuntu, you can use the OpenJDK which comes preinstalled with Ubuntu or you can install Oracle JDK by following the steps below. Personally I recommend that you do install Oracle JDK and to do so: 


1- Open the terminal by pressing CTRL + ALT + T and execute following line one by one. Depending one the speed of your internet connection this might take a few moments.

                             sudo add-apt-repository ppa:webupd8team/java
              sudo apt-get update
              sudo apt-get install oracle-java8-installer
              sudo apt-get install oracle-java8-set-default

2- Once you have installed JDK Download Android Studio , this again might take some time depending on the speed of your internet connection.

3- After downloading Android Studio extract the .zip file and move it to  in /opt directory, to do so simply execute following line in terminal. (Replace '145.3360264' with whatever version it is that you downloaded.

          sudo unzip android-studio-ide-145.3360264-linux.zip -d /opt

4- Navigate to the Android Studio executable directory by typing following line in terminal (assuming that you extracted it to /opt)
                 
                    cd /opt/android-studio/bin

5- Execute Android Studio.

                          ./studio.sh

 Android Studio will start and setup wizard will guide you through initial setup process. It will automatically download required compoenents (Android SDK, Android AVD system images). This again can take quite some time depending on your internet speed. 

After it completes you'll be greeted with the welcome screen.

      

Create a desktop entry by clicking on 'Configure' and select 'Create Desktop Entry' so it becomes available in Ubuntu application drawer.

6-
        There is one additional step the you have to perform if If you are using the 64 bit version of Ubuntu. There are some 32bit libraries required by Android Studio which you can install by executing following line in terminal.

         sudo apt-get install libc6:i386 libncurses5:i386 

    libstdc++6:i386 lib32z1 libbz2-1.0:i386

That's it, your Android development environment is ready and you can start building Android applications. Join me in the next post where I'll create a 'Hello World' application and run it on an Android device. 

If you encounter any problems during installation/setup please feel free to post it in the comments and I'll be glad to help.

Thanks for reading.

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Creating Your First Android App

Event Handling in Android

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