This post is about my battle of building, installing and configuring the Android Platform and the Android SDK on Ubuntu 9.10 64-bit x86. Insult to the injury, all that is happening in a VirtualBox VM on a Mac running Snow Leopard.

Please remember, this is NOT intended to be a step by step instruction manual. RTFM

Follow the regular installation instructions and possibly throw in the following in the mix, when and if you have to.

You will need the Android Source to build (doh!). Here.

Obstacle #1. No Java 1.5.0 in Ubuntu 9.10. Gotta have it, otherwise Android “make” barely bothers to launch.

http://java.sun.com/javase/downloads/index_jdk5.jsp is a starting point. I grabbed the rpm build.

Assuming you have the “rpm” (otherwise apt-get install rpm), install the downloaded package. –force-debian –nodeps flags may be required.

Now you have Java 1.5.0 in place, you need to setup your environment properly.

** change your jdk1.5.0 path if necessary

Getting close.

The “apt-get install” in the documentation http://source.android.com/download includes “sun-java5-jdk“, so take it out and run the command as follows:

Try the “make” now.

Next is installing the Android SDK on Ubuntu 9.10. Grab it at http://developer.android.com . Unzip, move it around etc.

Starting with Android SDK r3, you need to pick and choose what you want to download and install. “./android” under the “tools” directory does that for you. However, every single time I tried this on my Macs, I got the “You might want to force download through HTTP in the settings.” error. So be it, go the the options, simply check the “Force https://… sources to be fetched using http://…” option and download happily ever after. This was a no-go in my Ubuntu 9.10. The trick to properly enable and utilize that checkbox is to run:

Now, you should be able to download the SDK without the https:// mallarky.

After all this, hopefully, you should be Android’ing in your Ubuntu box in no time

Good luck.