If you have never used netbeans before, please don't try to use this plug in. Wait until you are familiar with the IDE first.
I. INSTALL AND SETUP ANDROID SDK
1. You need to download the Android SDK:
2. Install the Android SDK to C:\Android\android-sdk
3. Run Android SDK and install the recommended installations. If you want to use your programs on your Android device, I suggest installing the emulator for your device as well as the emulator for the newest Android versions.
II. SETUP ANDROID VIRTUAL DEVICE(AVD)
4. In Android SDK, go to Tools> AVC Manager.
5. Create a new Android Virtual Device(Emulator). Name it whatever you want. Set the target to the version of Android you want to emulate.
6. Set the size of the virtual SD card to whatever you want. For my first Emulator i set it to 100 MB.
7. Set Snapshot enabled to true to speed up future loading time. This takes a snapshot of the Emulator State on closing so that it does not go through the startup animations.
8. Finally, click Create AVD at the bottom.
III. TEST YOUR ANDROID EMULATOR
9. Still in the AVD Manager, click Start.
10. You will see that Save to snapshot has been selected.
11. If you want it to load from that snapshot everytime, select "LAUNCH FROM SNAPSHOT"
12. The emulator runs very slowly, especially the first time with the startup animations. You will get used to it after awhile.
13. You should get to the menu screen.
14. After checking that everything is okay, you can test out the emulator, or exit out.
15. Exiting saves a snapshot, which takes awhile. After taking the first snapshot, it is okay to uncheck the "Save to snapshot". You really don't need to do it after the first time, unless you want to save info to the emulator for testing purposes, such as adding phone numbers, etc.
IV. INSTALLING THE PLUGIN ON NETBEANS
16. Start Netbeans. Go to Tools->Plugins->Settings This is a list of all the places your plugin manager checks for updates.
17. Add a new update center: http://kenai.com/projects/nbandroid/downloads/download/updatecenter/updates.xml this is the home of the NetBeans Android project.
18. After installing, go to Tools->Plugins->Available Plugins. There should be a new plugin called Android. Install it. It is only about 700 kb. I have had problems with the test runner on Netbeans 7.2. I think the Test Runner for Netbeans 7.0 isn't compatable with 7.2.
NOTE: On previous versions, you had to add Android to the Tools->Java Platforms. (I Think). You don't need to do this anymore.
19. Go to Tools->Options->Miscellaneous->Android There is now an android tab in your options. Set the location of your android SDK installation. Mine is C:\Android\android-sdk
20. You should now be able to create an Android Project. File->New->Android->Android Project
21. Name your Project.
22. The convention for naming an Android Package is different than for
normal Java Projects.
WRONG: "MyPackage" //ERROR!
RIGHT!: "My.Package" //GOOD!
This is what it means when it says "Package name must have at least two parts"
23. This is the source code for your main file:
package bl.ah;
import android.app.Activity;
import android.os.Bundle;
public class MainActivity extends Activity
{
/** Called when the activity is first created. */
@Override
public void onCreate(Bundle savedInstanceState)
{
super.onCreate(savedInstanceState);
setContentView(R.layout.main);
}
}
24. add import "My.Package.R" where My.Package is the name of your package.
25. After Building, you can press Start to startup your android emulator.
YOU CAN ALSO INSTALL A PACKAGE MANUALLY
This is good practice anyway.
26. Use the explorer to go to your project folder. In the bin folder,
you should find a .apk file. This is the compressed version of your program.
It works sort of like a .jar file.
You can install it manually onto your emulator from the command line(start->search->cmd.exe if you haven't
used the command line before. It can also be found in c:\windows\System32 or SysWOW64
26. If you know how to set system variables, add C:\Android\android-sdk\platform tools; to your path
26.b. If you don't know how, use the commandline: cd C:\Android\android-sdk\platform tools
27. In this folder is adb.exe. This is the android debug bridge.
START YOUR ANDROID EMULATOR NOW
28. In the command prompt, type adb install C:\{path to project}\bin\{projectName}.apk
EX: adb install C:\Sean\aa1\bin\aa1-debug.apk
29. You should get 3 lines saying how large the installation file was,
where it was installed, and whether it was successful.
If it doesn't print this, either you typed in the instructions wrong, or you had an error.
NOW, Run your android emulator.
There should be an app named MainActivity. It was named after the class
name. The icon is the green android.
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CONGRATS
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If you have any problems, this is the place to post them!
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For information about making GUI's I have found this page to be useful:
