Following the directions on-line for android and eclipse defaults to an installation which can be run by users in a limited permission environment. This is good, but also means that they the computer they use ends up with a copy of eclipse and the sdk for each user in their home directory space. As an alternative, I tried the following steps to allow students to use the same copy of the sdk and eclipse for development. The instructions below are for windows 7, but an installation on linux or mac os would probably be able to use some of the same steps.
To install the software:
- Download and install the latest version of Java from Java.com
- Install the android sdk
- Install the Classic version of Eclipse
- Install the ADT Plugin for Eclipse see developer.android.com for instructions. (NOTE: You may need to install additional components for all of the adt plugin parts to install correctly. Adding http://download.eclipse.org/releases/indigo to the list of Software sources under Help -> Install New software fixed this.)
- You can choose the directory when eclipse starts. It should point to the location of the installed sdk. In my case that’s c:\Program Files (x86)\android\android-sdk .
To make available to other users:
- Move the eclipse directory to c:\Program Files\
- Copy the plugin directory from the user who set up ADT to c:\Program Files\Eclipse\dropins
- For windows 7, you can use an administrator level powershell to copy a shortcut to the eclipse executable to c:\ProgramData\Microsoft\Windows\Start Menu\Programs so that users can access the Eclipse IDE from the Start Menu.
- To stop eclipse from prompting new users for the location of the android sdk, copy the c:\Users\username\.android directory from the first user above to c:\Users\currentuser . A script could be set up to do this if the path variable in the ddms.cfg file is missing, or the .android directory isn’t present when a user logs in.