Setting up PhoneGap on Ubuntu for Android app development

This is just some notes I made, mostly taken from http://docs.phonegap.com/en/3.0.0/guide_overview_index.md.html.

I was installing PhoneGap 3.0.0 on Ubuntu 12.04.

I use Sublime Text 3 for development, so didn’t want any of the Eclipse-based tools.

Environment

First, upgrade npm, and get the latest nodejs (by installing ‘n’ and running that):

npm update npm -g
sudo npm install n -g
sudo n stable

Now install phonegap itself

sudo npm install -g phonegap

Download the Android sdk from http://developer.android.com/sdk/index.html, put it somewhere sensible and unpack it:

sudo mv ~/Downloads/adt-bundle-linux-x86-20130917.zip /opt/
cd /opt
sudo unzip adt-bundle-linux-x86-20130917.zip 
sudo chmod -R 777 /opt/adt-bundle-linux-x86-20130917

Update PATH in ~/.bashrc to include the phonegap tools:

# Add android sdk
PATH=$PATH:/opt/adt-bundle-linux-x86-20130917/sdk/platform-tools:/opt/adt-bundle-linux-x86-20130917/sdk/tools

and then ‘source ~/.bashrc’ to make sure you’ve got the new path setup.

Create an app

Create a phonegap app:

phonegap create my-app
cd my-app

Run the app

Run the app:

phonegap local run android

When I did this the first time, I got an error message:

[phonegap] adding the Android platform...
   [error] Please install Android target 17 (the Android 4.2 SDK). Make sure you have the latest Android tools installed as well.

So, run ‘android’, select a target (e.g. 「Android 4.2.2 (API 17)」), and click the 「Install 8 packages..」 button

May have to repeat the 「Install..」 stage – different licences to be accepted on each pass for system images etc?

The run again

phonegap local run android

Nope, still didn’t work – needed an emulator to be set up.

In the ‘android’ util, go to Tools -> Manage AVDs, use the 「New」 button to create a new AVD, then 「Start..」 the AVD.

First time, it failed with messages about not finding libGL.so. Second time, it started up the emulator..

Kill that one, run it again from the command line

phonegap local build android
phonegap install android

Fires up the emulator, installs the app (you have to find it on the Home screen, probably called 「Hello World」..

Deploy to the phone

The emulator seems to run very slowly, and not give much sense of what the app will actually be like on the phone.

So, deploy the app – plug in Android phone via USB, select 「USB debugging」 in the Developer section of the settings on the phone, and the app will be installed on the phone when you next do 「phonegap install…」

Add some plugins to the project

Once you get going, add some plugins to the project:

phonegap local plugin add https://git-wip-us.apache.org/repos/asf/cordova-plugin-device.git
phonegap local plugin add https://git-wip-us.apache.org/repos/asf/cordova-plugin-media.git

參考文章:http://julianhigman.com/blog/2013/10/17/notes-on-setting-up-phonegap-on-ubuntu-for-android-app-development/