33Chapter 2
Configuring Your Android App
Development System
Now that you have an Android development workstation assembled, with those valuable (but
free), professional-level, open source packages installed on it, it is time to configure the Eclipse
Android 4.4 Development Tools (ADT) integrated development environment (IDE) for what you will
be doing over the course of this book. Eclipse now works “out of the box” thanks to the ADT bundle,
a vast improvement over having to “wire” the Android SDK to Eclipse using plug-ins.
There are still a number of things that I want to teach you about in this chapter, however, regarding
how to keep the Eclipse ADT up-to-date and create and install Android Virtual Device (AVD)
emulators. Additionally, you’ll get a tour of what is installed as a part of the “default” or initial
ADT installation and how to install other Application Programming Interfaces (APIs), and other
non-standard capabilities, such as Google Cloud Services of one type or another, for instance.
Note You will be learning specifically about what an API is as well as about packages, classes, methods,
and interfaces in Chapter 5, when we cover Java programming concepts and terminology in detail.You’ve already configured your open source, new media content production software by installing
the latest updates and creating a quick launch icon on your Taskbar, which was relatively easy.
After we go over how to update, configure, and fine-tune Eclipse, I’m going to give you an overview
of what you will be learning during the remainder of this book, so you have an overview of what
you’ll be learning in Chapters 3 through 17, and how it will all fit together. I’ll make sure that the
content gets more advanced with each subsequent chapter of the book; by the end, you will be
well-versed in Android!