How can I use MS Visual Studio for Android Development?

Question

Yes, you can use Visual Studio for Android (native) using "vs-android".

Here are the steps to set it up:

1. Download the Android SDK here.

2. Download the Android NDK here.

3. Download Cygwin here.

4. Download the JDK here.

5. Download Visual Studio 2010, 2012 or 2013 here.

6. Download vs-android here.

7. Download Apache Ant here.

8. Set environment variables:

(Control Panel > System > Advanced > Environment Variables)

ANDROID_HOME = <install_path>\android-sdk
ANDROID_NDK_ROOT = <install_path>\android-ndk
ANT_HOME  = <install_path>\apache-ant
JAVA_HOME = <install_path>\jdk
_JAVA_OPTIONS = -Xms256m -Xmx512m  

9. Download examples from here.

It works like a charm... and best so far to use.

Yes you can:

http://www.gavpugh.com/2011/02/04/vs-android-developing-for-android-in-visual-studio/

In case you get "Unable to locate tools.jar. Expected to find it in C:\Program Files (x86)\Java\jre6\lib\tools.jar" you can add an environment variable JAVA_HOME that points to your Java JDK path, for example c:\sdks\glassfish3\jdk (restart MSVC afterwards)

An even better solution is using WinGDB Mobile Edition in Visual Studio: it lets you create and debug Android projects all inside Visual Studio:

http://ian-ni-lewis.blogspot.com/2011/01/its-like-coming-home-again.html

Download WinGDC for Android from http://www.wingdb.com/wgMobileEdition.htm

Believe me, I've tried so hard to find a decent IDE for Android developement but I failed. I used Visual Studio for many years, and it is so hard for me to get use to the way Eclipse doing things.

However, the new IntelliJ supports for Android development, it's the closest you can get.

If you're interested in producing HTML5 hybrid applications (web apps wrapped in a native container giving access to device functions), the Nomad Visual Studio extension supports building for android devices.

From the Android documentation:

The recommended way to develop an Android application is to use Eclipse with the ADT plugin... However, if you'd rather develop your application in another IDE, such as IntelliJ, or in a basic editor, such as Emacs, you can do that instead.

Currently, there are plug-ins for IntelliJ IDEA and NetBeans, but you can still use the tools in /tools to build, debug, monitor, measure and start the emulator.

Much has changed since this question was asked. Visual Studio 2013 with update 4 and Visual Studio 2015 now have integrated tools for Apache Cordova and you can run them on a Visual Studio emulator for Android.

Microsoft Visual Studio 2015 now has options for Android development: C++, Cordova, and C# with Xamarin. When choosing one of those Android development options, Visual Studio will also install the brand new Visual Studio Emulator for Android to use as a target for debugging your app. You can also download the emulator without needing to install Visual Studio. For more details see

Visuals Studio 2015 https://www.visualstudio.com/en-us/downloads/visual-studio-2015-downloads-vs

Visual Studio Emulator https://www.visualstudio.com/en-us/features/msft-android-emulator-vs.aspx

Video of features https://channel9.msdn.com/Events/Visual-Studio/Visual-Studio-2015-Final-Release-Event/Visual-Studio-Emulator-for-Android

Java Extension for Visuals Studio 2012, 2013. 2015 https://visualstudiogallery.msdn.microsoft.com/bc561769-36ff-4a40-9504-e266e8706f93