Question

I’d like to develop for Android but I don’t really like using an IDE for programming as I find them to be pretty cumbersome compared to a text editor and command console. Is there any way I can develop for Android without doing so in Eclipse, and instead using Gedit? The system requirements specified on the Android developers site list Eclipse as a requirement, but I Ewas wondering if anyone had found a way to manually tap into the SDK libraries outside of Eclipse. I’m using a Linux setup as my development box.

Answer 1

You do not have to use Eclipse, it’s just highly recommended because the tools are nicely integrated :

The recommended way to develop an
Android application is to use Eclipse
with the ADT plugin. The ADT plugin
provides editing, building, debugging,
and .apk packaging and signing
functionality integrated right into
the IDE.

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. The
SDK includes all the tools you need to
set up an Android project, build it,
debug it and then package it for
distribution. This document is your
guide to using these tools.

See this page on the Dev Guide for more info: Developing In Other IDEs