Setting Up Your Development Environment for Cordova Android projects

Updated 8/2/2015 to include Windows 7 setup. Adobe PhoneGap/Apache Cordova CLI quickly sets up your project files for the mobile environment. However, it requires a hefty setup of your development environment before you can begin making Android apps. If you are a working developer, all these tools are par for the course and you’ll have them already installed. If you are trying out Cordova/PhoneGap for the first time, and you are new to the programming world – welcome! – you need to install all the “dependencies” that Cordova/PhoneGap assumes are already resident on your system. Follow all these steps to make your Cordova/PhoneGap work go smoothly. Of course, these steps need to be done just once.

Signing an Android Apk via CLI

From time to time I got frustrated with Eclipse (update: I no longer use Eclipse). For those who have buggy software or other problems that hinder you from creating an apk file, you can follow these steps apart from opening Eclipse.

Purpose of this page for newcomers: In the past, I used Cordova/PhoneGap to create the debug version of my apps for testing, then turned to Eclipse to create the final apk that Google Play accepts for the store. Play does not accept debug versions of an app. This article gives the steps to use Cordova CLI to create the final apk version that would be uploaded to Google Play or any other app store that accepts apk files.

The information is divided into two sections. The first section is for new, version 1 apps in which a private key and keystore need to be generated. The second section is for version 2+ apps, in which the keystore is already present and needs to be applied to the apk to sign it. Just follow all these steps in the Terminal app – you need open no other software. 

Using Android Studio Beta with Cordova PhoneGap

Article updated here 11/2016: https://iphonedevlog.wordpress.com/2016/11/21/using-android-studio-with-cordova-projects/

I installed Android Studio Beta to see how it currently stacks up against Eclipse. It’s apparent that Android Development Tools for Eclipse is going the way of the dodo and will no longer be updated as vigorously. It’s my impression that Android Studio Beta (AS) is Google’s new SDK to replace Eclipse. We’ll need to learn it sooner or later, so why not now? Here are my notes as I set up the environment and discover the path to creating an apk. These steps track the install and setup of Android Studio down to outputting a signed apk for Google Play upload.