Configuring the AIR SDK to package AIR for Android applications on Linux or Mac OS

If we are using the open source AIR SDK with another IDE or even editing our project in a simple text editor, we can still compile applications for distribution on Android through command line tools.

How to do it…

If you do not already have the Adobe AIR SDK, you must first download it from http://www.adobe.com/products/air/sdk/ and extract the files into a directory on your hard drive: /home/joseph/SDKs/AIR, for example. You must also set a PATH variable in your operating system start up script pointing to the bin directory underneath the AIR SDK.

We will set the environment variable through the following steps:

  1. Open the Terminal.
  2. Now we must create the shell configuration profile. Enter the following into the Terminal window: cat >> .bash_profile on a Mac or cat >> .bashrc for Ubuntu (each Linux distribution may have its own particular naming convention for the startup script).
  3. Next, enter export PATH=$PATH:/home/joseph/SDKs/AIR/bin to set the PATH variable pointing to the AIR development tools bin directory. Hit Enter.
  4. Enter Ctrl+Shift+D to end this process.
  5. Now we will check to be sure everything was added appropriately. Type cat .bashrc into the Terminal and hit Enter. You should see the PATH command spit back at you:
  6. You may need to log out of your profile and then log back in for the new environment variable to be picked up by the system.
  7. Bring up the Terminal again, after logging back into your profile.
  8. Type echo $PATH into the Terminal and hit Enter. This should display everything that is included in the PATH variable including the location of our AIR bin directory.
  9. That should do it. We will now verify that we've set the AIR SDK up correctly. Type in adt -version and hit Enter. If all is well, ADT will spit back a version string that looks something like adt version "2.5.0.00000":

How it works…

Setting a PATH variable on the operating system allows us to be able to invoke the AIR Android compiler, ADT, from anywhere in our system without having to traverse file directories and specify long path names.

See also…

Note that you may have to log out of your session and then log back in for the new PATH variables to take effect. If using a Windows operating system, you can also set specific environment variables. See the previous recipe, Configuring the AIR SDK to package AIR for Android applications on Windows for an example of this.

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