Eclipse IDE for Native OpenCV development on Android

As my new internship requires me to do Android-development, I'm trying to build myself a clean Eclipse-IDE and easy-to-follow Step-by-Step instructions on how to do that, so I can fall back to this clean environment whenenver I messed up my working one. Therefore I extract all components into one Root-Directory and create a script to set needed Environment-Variables whenever changing or deploying it to a new machine.

Please note I used Eclipse Indigo, although Juno is already available, because Juno has some serious problems when combined with Android NDK, they're currently working on that.

1. Get yourself Java JDK  from http://www.oracle.com/technetwork/java/javase/downloads/index.html. I fetched Java SE 7. Of course you have to install JDK after the download succeeded.
2. Create a root-folder (I called it androidEclipse) and download the following items to this location:
1. Get Eclipse for Java Develpers EE from http://www.eclipse.org/downloads/. I downloaded Indigo for Windows 64bit. Extract it somewhere on your system, but make sure you have no spaces in the absolute path to avoid possible complications with NDK and OpenCV later on.
2. Get Native Development Kit for Android http://developer.android.com/tools/sdk/ndk/index.html (android-ndk-r8b-windows.zip in my case)
3. Get OpenCV4Android in latest version from http://opencv.org/downloads.html (2.4.2 here) 
3. Extract all archives and place it together in a Folder, e.g. androidEclipse
4. Install CDT (C and C++ Development)
1. Go to Help => Install new Software
2. Enter the p2 repository url which could be found at http://www.eclipse.org/cdt/downloads.php. In my case it was http://download.eclipse.org/tools/cdt/releases/indigo. Select CDT Main and Optional features and install it after agreeing the terms and conditions.
   Note: Probably it doesn't work because of conflicting dependencies. In this case (when installing Indigo, never experienced that in Juno) install CDT Main Features,TCF and Uncategorized, restart Eclipse and then install CDT Optional features.

   

   Install new Software: CDT
   
   

3. Restart Ecplise
4. Test if you can create a new C or C++ project and compile a Hello-World project.
5. Install ADT (Android Development Tools) Plugin to eclipse.
   Refer to http://developer.android.com/tools/sdk/eclipse-adt.html and install similar to CDT via Repository URL https://dl-ssl.google.com/android/eclipse/. Please keep in mind, if this repository is extraordinary slow or not working, just drop the s in https - this is also recommended from developer.android.com.
   You need to install Developer Tools and NDK Plugins, but I'm not quite sure the second one is necessary.
6. Now we have to adjust the Environment of our IDE. We have to create two environment-variables:
   NDKROOT ... Path to root of ndk-Folder (e.g. D:\AV\androidEclipse\android-ndk-r8b)
   OPENCVROOT ... Path to root of android-openCV-Folder (e.g. D:\AV\androidEclipse\OpenCV-2.4.2-android-sdk)
   
   You have to restart Eclipse (best your whole System, Windows is often a bit unpredictable in these manners) in order to get it to know the new environment variables. Windows console knows them immediately, but some other applications (such as eclipse) don't.
7. Depending on which Android platform you're developing on, you have to install further API Support. To do so, go to SDK-Manager and select the desired packages. I additionally installed API 10 SDK Platform Android 2.3.3 and the Google APIs for API 10.
8. Good, you're done and your IDE is (or should be) ready. Please refer the next post on how to create a Project that features JNI and OpenCV - and the combination of those two.
   
   Click here for the next post