how to install android sdk for xamarin mac

Step 4 Set your environmental variables You need to set the below environmental variables containing the path to our SDK, so any running program can find it in your pc: ANDROIDSDKROOT Path to your SDK folder ANDROIDHOME The same as ANDROIDSDKROOT.

But if you are using another code editor, like Sublime Text or VSCode, installing the Android Studio will just mess up with your setup and consume your precious RAM for no good reason.

Android Sdk For Xamarin How To Properly Do

I had a hard time figuring out how to properly do this setup due the lack of documentation about it, so i hope this article helps you.

Recommended previous knowledge: SDK (Standard Development Kit); Read about on Wikipedia; AVD (Android Virtual Device); Read about on docs; CLI (Command Line Interface); Read about on Wikipedia; Android API levels; Read about on Vanderbilt University; How to open, navigate and execute files in your OS terminal; Know what are environmental variables; Understanding the Android SDK Basically, the Android SDK is a bunch of packages necessary to develop for Android.

These packages stays in subfolders of a folder called sdk (or android-sdk sometimes).

You do not need to know how these packages really work, just what they do.

The picture below is my Android SDK folder, these are the basic packages you will need in order to get everything working properly.

Here is a brief explanation of each package: tools: This package is mainly used to manage the other packages and to create AVDs; emulator: As the name suggest, this is the Android emulator; platform-tools: Some tools to communicate with Android devices when you plug then in your computer; patcher: This package is automatically downloaded by the SDK.

These are some quite simple CLIs used to manage the Android SDK.

Step 1 Download the tools package First, you need to download the tools package.

First, go to the Android Studio download page:; Then click in Download Options; There you will find a table named Command line tools only; This table contain some zip files.

Android Sdk For Xamarin Mac Or Linux

Download the appropriate file for your system ( Windows, Mac or Linux ); Extract this zip and you will get a folder called tools: This is the tools package i explained earlier; Create a folder anywhere you prefer to place your SDK.

I recommend you to stick with one of these commonly used places: on Windows: Globally: C:Androidsdk or C:android-sdk (this is not default, but i usually set my SDK here on Windows) One user only: C:Users AppDataLocalAndroidsdk on Linux Globally: optandroidsdk or optandroid-sdk One user only: home.androidsdk on MacOS Globally: LibraryAndroidsdk One user only: Users LibraryAndroidsdk And move the tools folder to this new sdk folder.

Make sure you have admin access to this folder and any sub-folders inside it, or the tools package will fail to download new packages.

Note: You can also download a pre-build package for your SO (like the one available on Ubuntu repository).

But i do not recommend you do to so, because they probably will not be updated and will be harder to manage, since it was automatically installed.

Step 2 You need Java 8 The Android SDK packages require Java 8.

If you are using a newer version, you have to downgrade to Java 8 or you will eventually get some errors, because it is not compatible.

If you do not have the Java 8 SDK, here is how you can install it: On windows download it here: On Ubuntu run these commands: sudo apt-get update sudo apt-get install openjdk-8-jdk Sorry for MacOS users, i dont know how to install it on this OS.

Step 3 Download the essential packages Now, download the platform-tools and the emulator packages, because they contain some CLI binary files you will need later.

I decided to download these packages first in order to set all the necessary environment variables at once and make the rest of the process easier.

Open a terminal window (you need to use a terminal, not the file explorer), go to your sdk folder and navigate to the toolsbin directory.

This folder contain the SDKManager binary: this is a CLI used to list the available packages in the Googles repository and download, update or remove them from your SDK folder.

The bellow command will list all packages installed (the first items on the list) and all packages available to download:.sdkmanager list To download the packages, simply copy the package names and pass it as a parameter to the SDKManager CLI using the terminal:.sdkmanager platform-tools emulator If you open your sdk folder you should see these packages folders there.

How To Install Android Sdk For Xamarin Mac