"Best" development environment for Android

[kancept]

I have the availability of choosing the OS and environment and want to start developing for Android. Which choice of OS/Tools has everyone found to be the best for beginners in this? I have linux (Fedora and Ubuntu), WinXP, and OSX all available to me here at home. I do like using Komodo (All Platforms) and Textedit (Mac OS), and haven't really dug into Eclipse yet.

Opinions? Studies? What do you all use?

Thanks!

[mufumbo]

I stick with eclipse because i'm used to it and it has everything integrated.

Lately I am getting very very tired of it because it's consuming 100% of my CPU when the emulator is running. It seems to be better with the last update of the android plugin, but it's very slow and it only happens with MacOSX, my other linux machine does not have this problem.

[dseguret]

Eclipse is very usefull, and more so at the beginning, while you still don't know your way around the numerous tools used to build resources packages, compile, sign applications, and so on.

Eclipse may be slow if you have too many open projects or plugins (or bad memory parameterization or insufficient memory) but those problems can be workaround.

Eclipse is really the recommanded way to go for the beginner on Android.

[another_sam]

Eclipse is very usefull, and more so at the beginning, while you still don't know your way around the numerous tools used to build resources packages, compile, sign applications, and so on.

Eclipse may be slow if you have too many open projects or plugins (or bad memory parameterization or insufficient memory) but those problems can be workaround.

Eclipse is really the recommanded way to go for the beginner on Android.

compiling and testing the official hello world takes 79 seconds on a core duo t2400, ubuntu 10.04, eclipse 3.5.2 just installed for the android's sake.

waiting more than a minute per test is very disappointing for me. it makes my whole brain to work slower.

what could I check or set to get the best speed possible?


edit: ok I think I went to fast. 10 seconds if I recompile _without_ closing the virtual android device first. that's nice.

[Scythe]

Eclipse -- I couldn't imagine building an app in another environment since Eclipse is all the Android folks developed the emulator for.

I wouldn't mind a NetBeans version...

As you've noticed, leave your AVD (Android Virtual Device) running after the initial launch. When it is compiled and deployed again, the Android plugin will marshal the changed version of the app up into the already launched AVD.

[Wonsanim]

another_sam welcome to AC forum

[Marcusch]

Netbeans. Basically because it worked right from the start and eclipse didn´t.

[Lynx28]

If you're using a Virtual Machine or Remote Desktop type of connection to the development environment I found that running the emulator on the host works really well!

I'm using a Linux environment for development (Ubuntu Maverick) that I access using XDMCP with Xming. Trying to run the emulator with eclipse was extremely painful. Other devs I talked with that use a Windows VM with eclipse had better performance ... but still not good.

I needed to run the emulator stand-alone on the host for a demo, and decided to configure it as the target for development sessions with eclipse running on the Linux box. Just had to open an SSH tunnel between the Linux box and the host (Windows 7) and it worked really well. With this setup I leave the emulator running on the host and can run or debug the app within seconds! At least 10x faster than running the emulator on the same box as eclipse.

[Erel]

If you are using Windows you can try Basic4android. It is a new IDE similar to Visual Studio. The language is similar to Visual basic and it includes a GUI designer.
http://www.basic4ppc.com

[cactusmitch]

An Acer One, Eclipse, and Zend is what I'm finally getting to work. I recommended Jonathan Stark's O'Reilly book Building Android Apps, with HTML, CSS and JavaScript.
It took a while to get the SDK and AVD's downloaded and working. I have experience with Linux, SuSE etc. and use the windows based netbook because of the built in wifi. I do most of my work in public places on "free" wifis.
I will be very interested in getting a tablet with dual book Op Systems, Android and Windows, when they become available on this side of the globe. I have read that such are available in Asia. Oh! I got a LG Ally for sucker price of $29 from Sam's club.