Now I’ve got a project that needs android, and I’ve had some requests for certain android apps. So, I’ve acquired a Nexus 7 for dev testing and decided to set up a linux workstation to develop on. I had a quad core xeon poweredge tower that’s been sitting in the floor for a few months. (previously it was my test ESXi host.)

So, I installed Ubuntu 12.10 in the usual fashion. (downloaded the iso and wasted a CD since I couldn’t find a thumb drive for it). Post installation, I updated.

sudo apt-get update

sudo apt-get upgrade

Then I needed a version of java to run this thing. The standard free dev environment is eclipse, which needs java.

sudo apt-get install openjdk-7-jre-headless

So now java -version returns some useful information.

java -version
java version “1.7.0_15″
OpenJDK Runtime Environment (IcedTea7 2.3.7) (7u15-2.3.7-0ubuntu1~12.10)
OpenJDK 64-Bit Server VM (build 23.7-b01, mixed mode)

After that I downloaded the Android ADT bundle. The ADT bundle has eclipse preconfigured for android development. This is a huge improvement from before. My frustration on my previous attempt was really that eclipse wouldn’t configure properly. This way, it’s pretty trivial to get things running. However, I ran into a problem. When I launched eclipse from the adt bundle, I got an error. Eclipse popped up a window complaining about no such file when trying to run adb.

I have a 64 bit install of ubuntu. I installed the 64bit ADT bundle. However, it wants some 32bit tools! Back to apt-get!

sudo apt-get install ia32-libs

Say yes and let it install the 5 billion dependencies.

Try running eclipse again…

Boom! Headshot! For a second, it looked like it was broken. However, it’s just Ubuntu window management being goofy. Mouse over the menu bar at the top of the screen and the file menu and friends will appear. Now for some development….