The sections below describe the system and software requirements for developing Android applications using the Android SDK.
Supported Operating Systems
- Windows XP (32-bit), Vista (32- or 64-bit), or Windows 7 (32- or 64-bit)
- Mac OS X 10.5.8 or later (x86 only)
- Linux (tested on Ubuntu Linux, Lucid Lynx)
- GNU C Library (glibc) 2.7 or later is required.
- On Ubuntu Linux, version 8.04 or later is required.
- 64-bit distributions must be capable of running 32-bit applications. For information about how to add support for 32-bit applications, see the Ubuntu Linux installation notes.
Supported Development Environments
Eclipse IDE
- Eclipse 3.6 (Helios) or greater
Note: Eclipse 3.5 (Galileo) is no longer supported with the latest version of ADT.
- Eclipse JDT plugin (included in most Eclipse IDE packages)
- If you need to install or update Eclipse, you can download it from http://www.eclipse.org/downloads/.
Several types of Eclipse packages are available for each platform. For developing Android applications, we recommend that you install one of these packages:
- Eclipse IDE for Java Developers
- Eclipse Classic
- Eclipse IDE for Java EE Developers
- JDK 5 or JDK 6 (JRE alone is not sufficient)
- Android Development Tools plugin (recommended)
- Not compatible with Gnu Compiler for Java (gcj)
Other development environments or IDEs
- JDK 5 or JDK 6 (JRE alone is not sufficient)
- Apache Ant 1.8 or later
- Not compatible with Gnu Compiler for Java (gcj)
Note: If JDK is already installed on your development computer, please take a moment to make sure that it meets the version requirements listed above. In particular, note that some Linux distributions may include JDK 1.4 or Gnu Compiler for Java, both of which are not supported for Android development.
Hardware requirements
The Android SDK requires disk storage for all of the components that you choose to install. The table below provides a rough idea of the disk-space requirements to expect, based on the components that you plan to use.
| Component type | Approximate size | Comments |
|---|---|---|
| SDK Tools | 35 MB | Required. |
| SDK Platform-tools | 6 MB | Required. |
| Android platform (each) | 150 MB | At least one platform is required. |
| SDK Add-on (each) | 100 MB | Optional. |
| USB Driver for Windows | 10 MB | Optional. For Windows only. |
| Samples (per platform) | 10M | Optional. |
| Offline documentation | 250 MB | Optional. |
Note that the disk-space requirements above are in addition to those of the Eclipse IDE, JDK, or other prerequisite tools that you may need to install on your development computer.