dwayne/basics.md

## basics.md

      
    Raw
  

              basics.md
            
          
    Basics

The best guide for getting up to speed with Android Development that I've come across has to be the Getting Started Training Guide from the Android Developers website. There has to be better and low and behold I found this and this, i.e. How to Program for Android and Android Bootcamp Series 2012 Video Tutorial.
For beginners, the ADT (Android Developer Tools) Bundle is recommended for quickly starting Android development.
If you don't already have the JDK installed on your system you'd need to install it. For Ubuntu users, you can follow the instructions here.
Essentially:
$ sudo add-apt-repository ppa:webupd8team/java
$ sudo apt-get update
$ sudo apt-get install oracle-java7-installer

For instructions about setting up your Android SDK for the first time, read Setting Up the ADT Bundle.
To access Android SDK tools from the command line, add this to your .bashrc.
# Android SDK
export ANDROID_HOME=path/to/sdk
export PATH=$ANDROID_HOME/tools:$ANDROID_HOME/platform-tools:$PATH

Next step: Follow along with the provided training material.
How to Enable Developer Options on Android 4.2+


Go to the Settings menu and scroll down to About phone. Tap it.
Scroll down to the bottom again where you see build number.
Tap it 7 times and the Developer Options will appear on the Settings menu.

Resources


Learning Android
Android Buidling Blocks
Dashboards
SFAndroid.org
AndroidOpen.com

Using Git Version Control

See How to add Git Source Control to your existing Android Eclipse Project.
Note: Follow the instructions given but don't add the bin and gen directories to the repository. First remove them from the index if you added them. To do this right click on each one in turn and select Team > Untrack. Then add them to the .gitignore file. To do this right click on each one in turn and select Team > Ignore. This was already included in the video.
Resources


EGit, EGit User Guide
Git in Eclipse


## ruboto.md

      
    Raw
  

              ruboto.md
            
          
    Getting Started

Just adding this in case I decide to use it in the future but I need to understand vanilla Android before I start adding extra layers of complexity into the workflow.
Requirements


Install the JDK if it's not on your system already
Install the Android SDK
Add the SDK to $ANDROID_HOME as an absolute path (Java does not expand tildes ~)
Add the SDK's tools/ and platform-tools/ directory to your $PATH

Ruby

Install jruby. You can use rvm.
$ rvm install jruby

Ruboto

$ gem install ruboto

Setup

You can easily check or install the requirements above:
$ ruboto setup

Read


README
Wiki


## the-android-stack.md

      
    Raw
  

              the-android-stack.md
            
          
    The Android Stack

From top to bottom:

Applications
Application Framework
Libraries
Linux Kernel

Why Linux Kernel?

Runs on many different devices. It's easily portable since the driver model is well known.
Secure. We know quite a bit about its security model.
Open Source.
Cost.

Dalvik VM is Android's implementation of the Java VM.
Dalvik is optimized for mobile devices:

Battery consumption
CPU capabilities

Key differences:

Register based vs. stacked based
Dalvik runs .dex files
More efficient and compact implementation
Different set of Java libraries than JDK

Dalvik executable + Resources + Native Libraries = APK
Side loading = Putting APK on device
It is possible to create an internal application directory.
Resources


The Dalvik Virtual Machine Architecture