Beginning Android: Installing and Running Your First App

April 20, 2012

Lesson 6: Install and Run Your First App

Lesson 3 introduced you to an app named W2A and showed you how to build this app. Now that you’ve learned to create and launch an AVD, Lesson 6 shows you how to install and run W2A on this device.

Install W2A

Lesson 3’s W2A-debug.apk file must be installed on the MyAVD emulated device before you can run this app. Assuming Windows, execute the following command line to install this APK on MyAVD, which must be running:

adb install C:prjdevW2AbinW2A-debug.apk

If adb outputs error: device offline or doesn’t finish, re-execute this command line until this error
disappears. Assuming success, you should see a message that’s similar to the following message:

31 KB/s (4508 bytes in 0.140s)

pkg: /data/local/tmp/W2A-debug.apk

Success

Note: You will have to include the path to adb in the command line if you haven’t added the android- sdkplatform-tools directory to your PATH environment variable.

Run W2A

Click the home screen’s app launcher icon (the rectangular grid icon) and select the W2A icon, which is shown in Figure 18.

Figure 18: W2A is the highlighted entry on the app launcher screen.

Click the W2A icon to launch this app. You should see the screen whose upper portion is shown in Figure 19.

Figure 19: Android sends you a greeting.

When you finish looking at this app, press the Esc key or click the BACK button in the phone controls to return to the app launcher screen, from where you can explore and play with the device’s preinstalled apps.

Review

The following review questions help you test your mastery of Lesson 6’s material:

What tool do you use to install W2A’s APK on the emulated device?
How do you run W2A?