Installing Android SDK (ADT Bundle)

Steps to install Android ADT Bundle:

1. Go to the Android Developer site http://developer.android.com/sdk/index.html, to download the latest SDK

2. Download the SDK file by clicking  the 'Download the SDK ADT Bundle for Windows' button to the Right Hand side

3. You will be presented with the 'Terms and Conditions' screen. Accept the Terms & Conditions, Select whether the OS is 32 bit or 64 bit and download the SDK.

Android SDK is downloaded. Unzip the downlaoded SDK file

To use / execute the ‘adb’ and ‘ddms’ from anywhere, it would be good if their paths are set to the ‘%PATH%’ Environment Variable

Setting up the path for 'adb' and 'ddms' to the Path Variable:

Now that the Android SDK is installed, let's set the path of 'adb' and 'ddms' to the Environment variable %PATH%, so we can execute/run  adb commands and ddms from anywhere in the command prompt

adb: adb is generally located at 'platform-tools'. Adb lets the user to communicate with the Emulator, the connected device , Platform Tools are generally used to develop and debug the applications

  Assumptions:

1. Let’s assume that we are using 'Windows 7' Operating System

2. 'adb' is installed at the path - 'G:\Software\android_sdk_ADT_bundle\adt-bundle-windows-x86_64\sdk\platform-tools'

Steps:

1. Go to 'My Computer'

2. Right click and select 'Properties'

3. Select the 'Advanced System Settings' option from the left hand side tab

4. Click 'Environment Variables' button from the 'Advanced' tab

5. Click the 'New' button under the System Variables 

6. Give the Variable Name as ADB_HOME and the Variable Value as      G:\Software\android_sdk_ADT_bundle\adt-bundle-windows-x86_64\sdk\platform-tools 

7. Click the 'OK' button

8. Now select the 'Path' variable from the System Variables, and click the Edit button

9. Go to the end of the Variable Value and  type ;%ADB_HOME%;

10. Click 'OK' button thrice 

Steps to check if the Path Variable is updated with the variable ADB_HOME or not:

If the command prompt is already open, close it and re-open it.

1. Type echo %PATH% and press the Enter key, the Path value will be returned, find that the last value of the Path is the value (i.e. G:\Software\android_sdk_ADT_bundle\adt-bundle-windows-x86_64\sdk\platform-tools ) of the System Variable ADB_HOME

Now you can run the adb commands from anywhere

Similarly create a variable for setting the path for ddms which generally resides under tools' folder of Android SDK
G:\Software\android_sdk_ADT_bundle\adt-bundle-windows-x86_64\sdk\tools