Offline installation of Anrdoid SDK (Platforms and addons)

I installed Android SDK the other day to explore the apps platform for 2.1 (now that I have an Android phone!)…

Things you need:

A. SDK Starter package which just needs to be unzipped into a location (no installation as such):

Platform	Package	Size	MD5 Checksum
Windows	android-sdk_r07-windows.zip	23669664 bytes	69c40c2d2e408b623156934f9ae574f0
Mac OS X (intel)	android-sdk_r07-mac_x86.zip	19229546 bytes	0f330ed3ebb36786faf6dc72b8acf819
Linux (i386)	android-sdk_r07-linux_x86.tgz	17114517 bytes	e10c75da3d1aa147ddd4a5c58bfc3646

B. Platform package which is one or more of the various android versions for which you will be coding. Eg: 2.2, 2.1, 1.6, 1.5, etc.

This has to be selected and downloaded from within the Android SDK.


But Google was forcing me to download the platform package only through the SDK. Why can’t I have a set of zips I can reuse on my laptop, desltop1, desktop2 as needed instead of having to download the Android platform repeatedly from the net for each machine?


The answer was simple after a little investigation but apparently undocumented. See below steps for full offline installation:

1) First you need to download repository.xml file. To find out the download link for this file, launch Android AVD Manager (after unzipping the sdk, manually from %AndroidSDKDir%\tools\Android.bat or from the Eclipse plugin). Here, when you select available Packages, you will see the default target: http://dl.google.com/android/repository/repository.xml (maybe slightly different for you). Download this respository.xml file from the net (and close the AVD manager).

2) Open the repository.xml file and search for <sdk:platform>. You will see around 5 entries for each Android platform/version.

Identify the version you want and look for the platform filename inside the <sdk:url> tag. In my case, I wanted the 2.1 platform:

…
<sdk:platform>
     <sdk:version>2.1</sdk:version>
     <sdk:api-level>7</sdk:api-level>
     <sdk:codename/>
     <sdk:revision>02</sdk:revision>
     <sdk:min-tools-rev>6</sdk:min-tools-rev>
     <sdk:description>Android SDK Platform 2.1_r2</sdk:description>
     <sdk:desc-url>http://developer.android.com/sdk/</sdk:desc-url>
     <sdk:archives>
         <sdk:archive os="linux" arch="any">
             <sdk:size>72356359</sdk:size>
             <sdk:checksum type="sha1">a89d32ddf9d8629f15e682bdf220a88ca2392349</sdk:checksum>
             <sdk:url>android-2.1_r02-linux.zip</sdk:url>
         </sdk:archive>
         <sdk:archive os="macosx" arch="any">
             <sdk:size>71054909</sdk:size>
             <sdk:checksum type="sha1">8492e2f0b61819c4ca2e16601fc3260b341a3f06</sdk:checksum>
             <sdk:url>android-2.1_r02-macosx.zip</sdk:url>
         </sdk:archive>
         <sdk:archive os="windows" arch="any">
             <sdk:size>72950641</sdk:size>
             <sdk:checksum type="sha1">00cfb0bbbf24fc56c493990186deb0bfd44630e5</sdk:checksum>
             <sdk:url>android-2.1_r02-windows.zip</sdk:url>
         </sdk:archive>
     </sdk:archives>
 </sdk:platform>
…

3) In the url obtained from step 1 (http://dl.google.com/android/repository/repository.xml), replace repository.xml with the identified filename to get the actual url of the platform file. So in this example, the url would be: http://dl.google.com/android/repository/android-2.1_r02-windows.zip

Download this file (by typing into your browser url for eg).

4) Once the file is downloaded, extract this file into the <Androidsdk>\platforms directory. So you would end up with a new directory here as %AndroidSDKDir%\platforms\android-2.1_r02-windows.

That’s it!

If you now open the AVD manager again and click on Installed Packages, the extracted platform will show up as “SDK Platform Android a.b-update c, API d, revision e”


Use similar steps to download any Addons like Google APIs, but extract the Add-ons into %AndroidSDKDir%\add-ons directory. Just make sure that before you install the Addons, you have the corresponding platform already unzipped into the platforms directory.


To summarise, now I don’t need a net connection when to install the full android SDK – I just have to keep the following files handy:

· android-sdk_r07-windows.zip (unzip into a location where you want to install Android SDK, %AndroidSDKDir%)

· android-2.1_r02-windows.zip (unzip into %AndroidSDKDir%\platforms)

· google_apis-7_r01.zip (unzip into %AndroidSDKDir%\add-ons)

· ADT-0.9.9.zip (optional but useful Eclipse plugin – see  here  how to install this offline into Eclipse)