Android Development Tip: Managing AVDs with the Eclipse Android Development Tools Plug-In

I've updated my Eclipse development environment a number of times in the past few weeks, what with the Android 1.5 preview, then the release version. I checked for updates this week and noticed yet another version of the ADT Eclipse plugin was available. One interesting new feature added in the latest version is an Android Virtual Device (AVD) manager, accessible from within Eclipse.

All emulator instances using the Android 1.5 SDK require an AVD configuration. Sure, you can use the android command line interface to create and manage AVDs, but if you just want to create a simple AVD quickly, you can now use the little wizard provided with the ADT plugin. The AVD manager button is added to your Eclipse toolbar. It looks like a little black cell phone.

Simply click it and the AVD manager will launch, listing all AVDs on your system. You can Add and Delete AVDs, as well as Refresh the AVD listing.


When creating a new AVD, you can set the following information:

• The AVD friendly name
• The Target Android system
• The Skin
• Whether or not to create an SD Card Image
• 
  You cannot create custom hardware profiles. That, you still need to use the android command line tool for.