Saturday 28 September 2013

Android Development Tools

1 Android SDK

The Android Software Development Kit (Android SDK) contains the necessary tools to create, compile and package Android applications. Most of these tools are command line based. The primary way to develop Android applications is based on the Java programming language.
The Android SDK contains the Android debug bridge (adb) which is a tool which allows you to connect to a virtual or real Android device for the purpose of managing the device or debugging your application.

2. Android Developer Tools and Android Studio


Google provides graphical development environments based on the Eclipse and IntelliJ IDE to develop new applications.
The Android Developer Tools (ADT) are based on the Eclipse IDE and provide additional functionalities to develop Android applications. ADT is a set of components (plug-ins) which extend the Eclipse IDE with Android development capabilities.
Google also supports an IDE called the Android Studio for creating Android applications. This IDE is based on the IntelliJ IDE.
Both tools contain all required functionalities to create, compile, debug and deploy Android applications from the IDE. They also allow the developer to create and start Android virtual devices for testing.
Both tools provide specialized editors for Android specific files. Most of Android configuration files are based on XML. In this case these editors allow you to switch between the XML representation of the file and a structured user interface for entering the data.

3. Dalvik Virtual Machine

The Android system uses a special virtual machine, i.e. the Dalvik Virtual Machine to run Java based applications. Dalvik uses a custom bytecode format which is different from Java bytecode.
Therefore you cannot run Java class files on Android directly; they need to get converted in the Dalvik bytecode format.

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