anroid emulator and virtual device

An AVD is a device configuration for the Android emulator that allows you to model different configurations of Android-powered devices.

To configure AVD we follow( for eclipse): Window-->AVD Manager

Creating AVD using AVD Manager

An AVD consists of:

A hardware profile: Defines the hardware features of the virtual device. For example, you can define whether the device has a camera, whether it uses a physical QWERTY keyboard or a dialing pad, how much memory it has, and so on.
A mapping to a system image: You can define what version of the Android platform will run on the virtual device. You can choose a version of the standard Android platform or the system image packaged with an SDK add-on.
Other options: You can specify the emulator skin you want to use with the AVD, which lets you control the screen dimensions, appearance, and so on. You can also specify the emulated SD card to use with the AVD.
A dedicated storage area on your development machine: the device's user data (installed applications, settings, and so on) and emulated SD card are stored in this area.

we can create as many AVDs as we would like to test on. It is recommended that we test our applications on all API levels higher than the target API level for our application.


Configuration Inf to Create Galaxy_Nexus AVD:

Target: Google APIs - API Level 15 Skin: Built-in WXGA720 Selecting skin sets the following hardware parameters, leave them as-is: Hardware Back/Home: no Abstracted LCD density: 320 Keyboard lid support: no Max VM application heap size: 48 Device ram size: 1024 Galaxy Nexus has no SD card, just internal memory. Distinction between internal and external storage is important and can affect apps. To simulate this: add SD Card support=no parameter; launch emulator with -partition-size 1024 for 1GB internal memory, or use some other means to increase amount of internal memory available; If you're working on camera apps, you'll also want to set correct number of cameras, and correct resolution.

To run the Emulator we need to select the AVD from the list and click on the start button. After that unlock the AVD.

To run a project, opening the file in the eclipse. click on h run button form the toolbar. eclipse automatically install the application in the running emulator and will run it.

To get complete Info about Emulator and AVD(Anroid Virtual Device)
http://developer.android.com/tools/devices/emulator.html

From a web search I got teh following link containing the various AVD Configuration:
common Anroid Virtual device configuraiton

steps of android apps development

After preparing the environment, i was thinking about the next to do. coding or any other remaining steps. Then from the website i found a workflow for andapps development. I am sharing this here:

Workflow Detail

environment for anroid application development

Its the time to Disco(!!) Anroid Development.

Like all, recently I have tried to fall myself on that trap. Collecting some advise from one of my friend iam starting to put my footprint on that arena. He suggested me to follow a website:
http://developer.android.com/training/index.html

My friend is reliable for taking suggestion as he has recently completed a short course training of developing anroid application. He also provided me the required environment for starting the work. But i am interested to create the environment on my own hand( so that i can know the building blocks for developer environment).



First Requirement:
Willingness of mine
Ambition to do Earn
A PC
Making Time
No Excuse

And others are:
Eclipse( I have downloaded the mobile developer version of Eclipse, JUNO)
Anroid SDK
ADT(Anroid Developer Tools) Plugins for Eclipse



Next starting to install the above software:

1. Installation of Eclipse is nothing but to unzip the downloaded eclipse file and keep it in a save place(!!).(Requested not to keep it in System Drive).

2. To install Anroid SDK, just follow:

Your download package is an executable file that starts an installer. The installer checks your machine for required tools, such as the proper Java SE Development Kit (JDK) and installs it if necessary. The installer then saves the Android SDK Tools into a default location (or you can specify the location).

Make a note of the name and location of the SDK directory on your system—you will need to refer to the SDK directory later, when setting up the ADT plugin and when using the SDK tools from the command line.

Once the tools are installed, the installer offers to start the Android SDK Manager. Start it and continue with the installation guide by clicking the Next link on the right.

3. Now When I am in need to make relation between Eclipse and installed SDK.
Running Eclipse. Follow the following steps:
Window-->Preferences
But here I don't find any link point for Anroid. (Eclipse is not worry about Anroid at all). So Now I need to inform Eclipse that there is something in world called Anroid.

4. Install ADT Pluging for eclipse.
At Eclipse. Help-->(at bottom)Install New Software

Install Window will come. After clicking on Add button we get the window "Add Repository". Here we need to provide Name of the plugin and at bottom input box we will have to provide the url of the plugin.(In some cases if https:// does not work then we can use just http://).For ADT, the url will be https://dl-ssl.google.com/android/eclipse/ The best thing if we have a previously downloaded zip file of the plugin. In that case we we will have to click on Archive. Its helpful if you are confused with your internet connectivity.

Proceed next. Then the dependency plugins will also be listed. We will confirm it by clicking on OK.


Aftre installing the ADT, we will abole to create a relation between Eclipse and Anroid. No, if we traverse the Preferennces from the Window Menu of Eclipse we will get the Anroid listed in that window with configuration of SDK location.