What you need for this book

Android Studio running on any of the major operating systems can use the code in this book. Android Studio is a free software and full setup instructions for Windows are in the opening chapter.

Android Studio is the recommended development tool, and at the time of publication, the minimum system requirements were as follows:

Windows

• Microsoft® Windows® 8/7/Vista/2003 (32 or 64 bit)
• 2 GB RAM minimum; however, 4 GB RAM is recommended
• 400 MB hard disk space
• At least 1 GB for Android SDK, emulator system images, and caches
• 1280 x 800 minimum screen resolution
• Java Development Kit (JDK) 7
• Optional for accelerated emulator: Intel® processor with support for Intel® VT-x, Intel® EM64T (Intel® 64), and Execute Disable (XD) Bit functionality

Mac OS X

• Mac® OS X® 10.8.5 or a higher version, up to 10.9 (Mavericks)
• 2 GB RAM minimum; however, 4 GB RAM is recommended
• 400 MB hard disk space
• At least 1 GB for the Android SDK, emulator system images, and caches
• 1280 x 800 minimum screen resolution
• Java Runtime Environment (JRE) 6
• Java Development Kit (JDK) 7
• Optional for accelerated emulator: Intel® processor with support for Intel® VT-x, Intel® EM64T (Intel® 64), and Execute Disable (XD) Bit functionality

On a Mac OS, run Android Studio with Java Runtime Environment (JRE) 6 for optimized font rendering. You can then configure your project to use Java Development Kit (JDK) 6 or JDK 7.

Linux

• A GNOME or KDE desktop
• GNU C Library (glibc) 2.15 or later
• 2 GB RAM minimum; however, 4 GB RAM is recommended
• 400 MB hard disk space
• At least 1 GB for the Android SDK, emulator system images, and caches
• 1280 x 800 minimum screen resolution
• Oracle® Java Development Kit (JDK) 7

Tested on Ubuntu® 14.04, Trusty Tahr (64-bit distribution capable of running 32-bit applications).