Building an Android Project from Command Line with Eclipse

Question

I created a "Hello World" Android Project in Eclipse (Indigo) on Windows 7 64-bit. It's using Android SDK 1.6.

It builds from the IDE without any problems.

Now I want to build it from the command line. I found this question: Opening an eclipse project through command prompt or batch file and Headless Building with APT in Eclipse, so I ran this:

C:\inst\Android\eclipse>eclipsec.exe -data "C:\eclipsewsTest1" -application org.
eclipse.jdt.apt.core.aptBuild

What I'm getting is the following:

Building workspace
Building '/And1'
Invoking builder on '/And1'.
Invoking builder on '/And1'.
Invoking 'Java Builder' on '/And1'.
Cleaning output folder for And1
Build done
Invoking builder on '/And1'.

and then a dialog shows this message:

An error has occurred. See the log file C:\eclipsewsTest1\.metadata\.log

This log file contains something like this:

eclipse.buildId=M20110909-1335
java.version=1.7.0_01
java.vendor=Oracle Corporation
BootLoader constants: OS=win32, ARCH=x86_64, WS=win32, NL=en_US
Framework arguments:  -product org.eclipse.epp.package.java.product -application org.eclipse.jdt.apt.core.aptBuild
Command-line arguments:  -os win32 -ws win32 -arch x86_64 -product org.eclipse.epp.package.java.product -data C:\eclipsewsTest1 -application org.eclipse.jdt.apt.core.aptBuild

!ENTRY org.eclipse.core.resources 2 10035 2011-12-09 10:50:35.233
!MESSAGE The workspace exited with unsaved changes in the previous session; refreshing workspace to recover changes.

!ENTRY org.eclipse.osgi 4 0 2011-12-09 10:50:35.553
!MESSAGE An error occurred while automatically activating bundle com.android.ide.eclipse.ddms (351).
!STACK 0
org.osgi.framework.BundleException: Exception in com.android.ide.eclipse.ddms.DdmsPlugin.start() of bundle com.android.ide.eclipse.ddms.

Does anybody know what the problem is?

Answer 1

# 1. go into you Eclipse project
cd "C:\Users\username\workspace\app"

# 2. create build files (only first time)
"C:\Program Files\Android\android-sdk\tools\android.bat" update project --path .

# 3. Set Java JDK Path
set JAVA_HOME=C:\Program Files\Java\jdk1.6.0_25

# 4. Build with "ant debug"
"C:\Program Files\eclipse\plugins\org.apache.ant_1.8.3.v20120321-1730\bin\ant" debug

# 5. Deploy (and replace existing with -r)
"C:\Program Files\Android\android-sdk\platform-tools\adb.exe" 
   install -r "C:\Users\username\workspace\app\bin\appActivity-debug.apk"

# 6. Run it. Look up package and activity name in `AndroidManifest.xml`
"C:\Program Files\Android\android-sdk\platform-tools\adb.exe" 
   shell am start -n <your_package>/<activity_android:name>

# 7. View log.
"C:\Program Files\Android\android-sdk\platform-tools\adb.exe" logcat

Also see this blog and Android help.