IDE Color Themes for Eclipse and Visual Studio

I hate hate hate (did I say hate?) staring at black-on-white text on a monitor. When your whole day is spent in front of a computer, the glare from a bright LCD screen can lead to some pretty serious eye strain. So for any tool in which I spend a significant amount of time, I tend to adjust the colors to give my eyes a rest.

As a developer working in an IDE with syntax highlighting, this can become a time-consuming process as you hunt down every last textual variant in the options. Fortunately, the kindly residents of the interwebs have contributed their time to the following websites.

If you're a Microsoft corporate sellout, check out Studio Styles (for Visual Studio).

If you're an Open Source hippie code-hugger, give Eclipse Color Themes a click-through. There's also an Eclipse plug-in for easy in-editor switching. Nice!

And for the love of Cheese and Rice, turn down the brightness on those monitors! Your eyes will thank you!

Fixing Android ADT After Upgrade to Ubuntu 10.10

After upgrading from Ubuntu 10.4 to Ubuntu 10.10, I found that the Android ADT plug-in was not showing up in Eclipse anymore. None of the features were accessible from the Eclipse menus. The "Help -> Install New Software..." dialog would hide the packages when "Hide items that are already installed" was checked, and attempting to re-install gave an "already installed" error message.

Some googling uncovered others with this problem, particularly this helpful post from Sonal. The fix is, basically, to delete the entire configuration directory for eclipse. While a bit heavy-handed for those with complex installations and many installed components, it was fine for me as all I'm doing is Android development. My steps were slightly different from Sonal's, so here's a recap:

1. Exit eclipse if running
2. Delete (or backup) ~/.eclipse/org.eclipse.platform_3.5.0_155965261
3. Start eclipse
4. Open Help->Install New Software
5. Add the Eclipse 3.5 Default update site: http://download.eclipse.org/releases/galileo/
   (Note that I explicitly installed the WST Server Adapters, though adding the update site may be enough.)
6. Add the GEF (Graphical Editor Framework) plugin update site: http://download.eclipse.org/tools/gef/updates/releases
   (I did not explicitly install GEF.)
7. Add the Google Android ADT plugin update site: https://dl-ssl.google.com/android/eclipse
8. Install the "Android DDMS" and "Android Development Tools" packages from the Android ADT update site.

Notably, the GEF plugin appears to be new. I don't recall installing this under Ubuntu 10.4. Also, I believe that if you just add the update sites for the dependancies (WST Server Adapters and GEF), they will be installed automatically when you install the Android ADT packages. No need to hunt them down and install them directly. I haven't verified this though.

There may be more re-configuration to be done. I'll update this post with anything I find as it comes up.

Android Development - Starters Guide

I'm giving Android development another shot, and had to install Eclipse and the Android Development Tools again. Note that this is all on a box running Ubuntu 10.4.

The Android Developers site is a plethora of information, including setup instructions, a developer guide and reference, videos, tutorials, etc. The following pages seem to be the most relevant when first getting started:

• SDK Download and Quick Start, which includes a to-the-point SDK Quick Start guide
• Installing the SDK is a more thorough version of the Quick Start guide, including next steps such as recommended reading and tutorials
• A Hello, World tutorial, the recommended first step for new developers
• A Notepad tutorial, the recommended second step for new developers
• Developer Resources lists a few other tutorials that may be worth looking at

Here are the steps I took to prepare my development environment per the 'Installing the SDK' instructions:

1. I followed (and updated) my old post on Setting up Eclipse and Android Development Tools in Ubuntu to install the required Eclipse packages, and install the Android Development Tools plug-in for Eclipse. This covers steps 1 & 3 of the Quick Start / Installing the SDK guides.
2. For step 2 of the guides, installing the Android SDK, I downloaded the Linux platform SDK file from the SDK download page and unpacked it from the terminal with 'tar xzvf [filename]'. I also added the SDK tools directory to my path, per instructions in the Installing the SDK guide.
3. For step 4 of the guides, I ran the GUI 'Android SDK and AVD Manager' by typing 'android' at the terminal (the 'android' executable is in the SDK 'tools' folder). In the 'Available Packages' section, I installed everything. At this time, it included the SDK Platform and Google API packages for Android versions 1.5 - 2.2, the Samples for SDK API 7 and 8 (Android 2.1 and 2.2), and the latest Documentation package.

Note, I've let Eclipse use it's default '~/workspace/' path as my workspace, and I've unpacked the Android SDK into a folder under '~/dev/'. Also, the "Android SDK and AVD Manager" can also be launched from within Eclipse by selecting "Window -> Android SDK and AVD Manager". You must first tell it where to find the SDK by going to "Window -> Preferences -> Android".

From here I was able to successfully complete the "Hello, World" tutorial. Good luck, and happy coding!

Setting up Eclipse with Android Development Tools in Ubuntu

To get set up for Android App development, I'm following the instructions from Google here:
http://developer.android.com/sdk/installing.html

I installed Eclipse through the Ubuntu Software Center (searched for "eclipse" and clicked install).

Also had to install eclipse-jdt (Java Development Tools) through the Synaptic Package Manager.
Also had to install eclipse-pdt (Plugin Development Tools) through Package Manager.

(Edit 11/11/2010: When going through this process again with Ubuntu 10.4, I used the Ubuntu Software Center instead of the Synaptic Package Manager. Also, I must have meant eclipse-pde - Plugin Development Environment, as I can't find eclipse-pdt listed as an available package.)

Through Eclipses "Help -> Install New Software" dialog, I had to add the basic software source for eclipse (don't know why this isn't set up by default) which is:
http://download.eclipse.org/releases/galileo/
and install "WST Server Adapters" which is apparently a prerequisite for the ADT plugin. Learned that from this site: http://groups.google.com/group/android-developers/browse_thread/thread/1da899d34557f2e8?pli=1

Now to try installing the android plugin (ADT) by adding:
https://dl-ssl.google.com/android/eclipse/
to the eclipse list of software sources.

Looks like that did it! ADT is installed... (now what's next?)