Setting up the Android SDK for Visual Studio

Elements requires the Android SDK in order to build apps for the Android platform. The best way to install this is to install Android Studio (which you can then also use for visually designing Android user interface files.

The simplest way to set up the prerequisites is to download "Android Studio for Windows", run it, and follow the "Setup Wizard" it will present to guide you through installing the Android SDK. After that, the Android SDK will be available in %APPDATA%/Android/SDK, where Water will pick it up automatically.

Installing Required SDK Packages

After the Android SDK is installed, you will want to launch the "SDK Manager" tool and install some additional packages. You can do this from the Android Studio Splash screen, via the Configure menu:

On the "SDKs Platforms", tab, make sure one or more SDK Versions are installed. In general;, you will want to build for the hightest available (non-Beta) SDK, even if you support older versions via a Deployment Target.

On the "SDK Tools", you will want to select and install at least the following packages, if they are not already installed:

  • Android SDK Build-Tools
  • Android SDK Command-line Tools
  • Android SDK Platform Tools

Depending on your needs, yu might also want to install

  • Android Emulator
  • NDK (for Native NDK Extension development)

Manually Downloading the SDK

If you don't want to use Android Studio, you can also download the Android SDK as a plain .zip that can be extracted to an arbitrary location. You will then need to manually specify the path to it in Water's Preferences dialog:

Make sure to specify the path to and including the sdk folder. This folder should contain, among others, the ./platforms and ./tools subfolders. The Preferences dialog will show a red "Invalid path" message if not all required items could be found in the location you specified.

You can obtain the latest download at the URL below:

Device-Specific Setup

Depending on the Android Devices you want to develop for, some device-specific parts of the Android SDK might need to be installed and configured, or Windows device drivers might be needed. Check out the page below for links to setup and development instructions for popular Android devices, or check your device vendor's support pages.

See Also