34 CHAPTER 2: Configuring Your Android App Development System
Updating Eclipse ADT: Check For Updates!
This is a simple work process, which is actually similar across many advanced software packages,
so you may have seen what we are about to do before. There is a “Check for Updates” work process
for making sure that you have the latest version of your operating system (OS), production, or
development software. In fact, if you go into your Windows 8.1 Control Panel, you will see a Windows
Updates icon at the very bottom that performs this exact same function. You can configure this to be
automatic or you can run it manually, as we are about to do here, with your Eclipse ADT IDE.
Since we’re focusing on Android’s IDE in this chapter, we’ll be doing this inside of Eclipse, so you
can make sure that you are running the very latest version of your ADT IDE, including all of its many
components. You’ll always want to run the Check for Updates utility right after you install your
Eclipse ADT software, and at least weekly thereafter.
This is the reason we are covering this here first, as this is a continuation of all of the installation
work that you did in Chapter 1. If you have not done this already, out of sheer curiosity, launch
Eclipse ADT using a single mouse-click on the Eclipse (purple sphere) quick launch icon, which you
created in the previous chapter. Each time that you launch Eclipse ADT, you will be presented with
the Select a workspace option, inside a Workspace Launcher dialog, right after you see your
Android Developer Tools launch progress screen. Both of these are shown in Figure 2-1.
Figure 2-1. The Android Developer Tools launch progress (left) and Workspace Launcher dialog (right) on launch
You will probably accept the default workspace folder location for your Android project, although
you don’t have to, if you have another folder that you would prefer to use for your Android project.
I use the ADT suggested workspace folder, which is located under my operating system supplied
C:\Users folder, and under my system-name sub-folder, which on my AMD octa-core workstation is
named Default.Default-PC, a default (how can you tell?) folder name created by Windows 8, that I,
to this day, remain too lazy to change! I should have named the book Lazy Android Development.
After you select (and thus set) the Workspace location, Eclipse will then open up with an introductory
Welcome! screen, actually a tab, as shown in Figure 2-2. Click the close tab icon (or X) for now, it is
located in the right side of the tab, and let’s proceed to open a blank (empty) instance of the Eclipse
ADT IDE.