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caarmen/legacy-android-emulator.md

Last active January 12, 2025 16:31
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Run Android 1.5 Cupcake emulator on MacOS Intel (MacOS 15), in 2025
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legacy-android-emulator.md

Here's how you can develop for an Android 1.5 Cupcake emulator on MacOS 15, in 2025.

Installing legacy tools

Get the old android tools

We need an old version of the sdk "command line" tools, without android studio.

The available version numbers are here: https://developer.android.com/tools/releases/sdk-tools

You can go to https://developer.android.com/studio and scroll down to "Command line tools only".

However, this doesn't allow downloading older versions, only the latest one.

Instead, there are still legacy download links like this: https://dl.google.com/android/repository/tools_r25.2.5-macosx.zip

Version 25.2.5 works for this purpose.

Extract the zip to a folder, say /Users/jdoe/legacy-android-tools.

cd into the the extracted folder: cd /Users/jdoe/legacy-android-tools.

Use Java 1.8

Make sure you're using java 1.8, or the sdkmanager won't work:

export JAVA_HOME=/Library/Java/JavaVirtualMachines/jdk1.8.0_251.jdk/Contents/Home/
export PATH=$JAVA_HOME/bin:$PATH

Install old tools with sdkmanager.

☝️ You can list obsolete packages with sdkmanager --list --include_obsolete

Install the "platform" for cupcake:

./tools/bin/sdkmanager "platforms;android-3"

Install the "platform tools":

./tools/bin/sdkmanager platform-tools

Install the "build tools":

./tools/bin/sdkmanager  "build-tools;24.0.1"

Using legacy tools

Create a new project

You can use the old android tool to create a new project:

./tools/android create project --target android-3 --name myretroapp --activity RetroActivity --path /tmp/myapp --package com.example.retro

Create a new cupcake emulator

./tools/android create avd --target android-3 --name mycupcake

Launch the cupcake emulator

ANDROID_SDK_ROOT=. DYLD_LIBRARY_PATH=./tools/lib64/qt/lib/ ./tools/emulator -avd mycupcake

Use adb to interact with the device.

./platform-tools/adb logcat

Using eclipse

Download Eclipse IDE for Java developers, luna: https://www.eclipse.org/downloads/packages/release/Luna/SR2

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