Step 2 : Step by Step libGDX Tutorial : Environment SetUp

In previous Tutorial we had an overview of libGDX . This part covers the Environment Setup for libGDX

The first part of getting started with LibGDX is installation.  If you haven’t got a Java/Android development environment set up yet, this portion is going to be a bit annoying.  In a nutshell you need to install in order :

• 1. Java JDK
  2. Eclipse
  3. Android SDK
  4. Google ADT
  5. Google Plugin for Eclipse ( for GWT ).
  6. LibGDX

Java JDK : Download and install latest Java JDK . I am using Java jdk1.8.0_31 . Once Java is installed , Check it by opening command prompt and executing command java -version

Eclipse : The "Eclipse IDE for Java Developers" is usually sufficient. I downloaded Eslipse 64 bit Mars using following Link

Android SDK : Android SDK can be installed using following link : Android SDK  . Currently Android SDK is supported by IntelliJ IDE so the way i preferred to download Android SDK was to get from Eclipse directly as below :

• Start Eclipse, then select Help > Install New Software.
• Click Add, in the top-right corner.
• In the Add Repository dialog that appears, enter "ADT Plugin" for the Name and the following URL for the Location: https://dl-ssl.google.com/android/eclipse/
• Click OK and Eclipse will download the android SDK for you .
• Once Downloaded make sure you know the path of the android sdk . for me it was downloaded in C:\Users\<USER>\android-sdks
• We will need this path later on ...

Google ADT and Google Plugin for Eclipse ( for GWT ) : For this I used Eclipse Integration Gradle, use this update site:

• Start Eclipse, then select Help > Install New Software.
• Click Add, in the top-right corner.
• In the Add Repository dialog that appears, enter "ADT Plugin" for the Name and the following URL for the Location: http://dist.springsource.com/snapshot/TOOLS/gradle/nightly 
• Click OK

In Case you face issues in installation , Please add your comments or look at libGDX github wiki page for their instructions on setting up Development environment here

libGDX : Open libGDX download page using following link : libGDX and click Download Setup App . Doing that you will see a file named gdx-setup.jar downloaded which is the main setup app for libGDX projects .It is Gradle based setup application which will download all that's required automatically!

Once all this is done ... We can say most setup are done and we are ready to execute the demo app provided by libGDX .

Stay tuned and lets see how we create the demo app in the next section of this Tutorial series on libGDX .