How To Install Android Studio In Ubuntu

In the eve of 2018, the most voted answer is still awesome, but seems a bit outdated, and as I run into this recently, I decided to share my fresh experience here.

1. Installing Java

Since Android Studio 2.2 was released you won't need to install any JDK yourself in most cases, since it's brought with the IDE.

Reference for more details

2. Installing prerequisite software

The following command should be run in the first place, so we can avoid some problems with the AVD tool in future:

          sudo apt-get install libc6:i386 libncurses5:i386 libstdc++6:i386 lib32z1 libbz2-1.0:i386

Reference for more details

3. Downloading and Unpackaging Android Studio

You can get Android Studio archive from here. Nothing special, just wait until loading is finished :)

Google is a registered LANANA provider, so in order to comply the Linux FSH contract (part 3.13 /opt) I would like to suggest unpacking the archive to the google/android-studio folder:

          sudo unzip ~/Downloads/android-studio-ide-171.4443003-linux.zip -d /opt/google/

3.1 [Optional] Change write permission for Android Studio folder

You may find setting write permissions for all users convenient when it comes to updating Android Studio. However it's not widely used, and seems to violate the principle of least privilege. However, just in case, if you like this way better just execute in terminal:

          sudo chmod o+w /opt/google/android-studio/

Alternatively you can always run Android-Studio on behalf of root and performs all updates you need without this step involved.

4. Creating Android SDK directory

I don't embrace the idea that each user should have his own copy of Android SDK tools (build tools, source codes, system images, etc..) but Android Studio works exactly that way (it's likely because of permissions issue). Let's make it use another folder shared among all users in the system.

4.1 Create directory

Make the android-sdk folder for future use:

          sudo mkdir /opt/google/android-sdk sudo chmod o+w /opt/google/android-sdk

The last command changes permissions so every user in the system is able to edit this android-sdk folder (installing and removing packages).

4.2 Setting Environment Variables

Android Studio is still pointing to its own path at this moment. To make Android Studio install SDKs in shared folder, we need to specify environment variables. Currently there are two variables pointing to SDK folder: ANDROID_HOME and ANDROID_SDK_ROOT. The first is deprecated, but Android Studio won't use ANDROID_SDK_ROOT when launching it first time even if it's specified, so i would recommend to specify both variables. To keep things consistent and clear, let's specify them in a separate shell for the android-studio in the profile.d folder (so you can remove them later in case of removing Android Studio):

          sudo -i cd /etc/profile.d/ echo export ANDROID_SDK_ROOT=/opt/google/android-sdk/ > android_studio.sh echo export ANDROID_HOME=/opt/google/android-sdk/ >> android_studio.sh

4.2.1 Setting JAVA_HOME Variable

If you going to use gradlew commands via CLI interface, it will be useful to add JAVA_HOME pointing to embedded JRE (otherwise gradle won't be able to locate it)

          echo export JAVA_HOME=/opt/google/android-studio/jre >> android_studio.sh

Now you need log out the system and log in back to apply this new script.

Reference for more details

5. Installing SDK

Since we changed permissions for the SDK folder (/opt/google/android-sdk/), we don't need any special permissions to write in it. Just run android-studio on behalf of your current user:

          /opt/google/android-studio/bin/studio.sh

Now follow setup wizard instructions. Eventually you will hit Downloading Components window. It may take for a while until required components are installed. As we took care about all required libraries and software from very beginning (part 2), this process should be finished without any error.

Downloading Android SDK

Upon first launch Android Studio installs only latest SDK platform (at the time of writing API 27). To make your toolset viable, you need at least 2-3 more older SDK platforms installed (here you can find the dashboard showing actual demand for different APIs version). In order to get them, from the Android Studio welcoming screen, click "Configure" and choose the SDK Manager option.

Android SDK option

From here you can choose whatever you need to develop Android apps. P.S. You can actually install everything from the list (even obsolete packages), but it will take ages to download.

6. Creating desktop entry

Currently Android Studio offers embedded feature in order to create desktop entry. We need to run Studio with root permissions, so it's possible to do that for all users in the system, :

          sudo -E /opt/google/android-studio/bin/studio.sh

P.S. -E option is needed to keep our environment variables (ANDROID_HOME/ANDROID_SDK_ROOT) available while sudoing.

You will have to pass the same Setup Wizard again (it's being performed for the root user now) and once you hit the Welcoming screen, you can find option Create Desktop Entry from "Configure" menu:

Create Desktop Entry item

In the dialog box that opens, ensure that "Create the entry for all users" checkbox is checked and click OK.

enter image description here

Now you can close Android Studio and open from Unity Launcher!

P.S. For those who are interested in where the entry was created and what is inside, you can find it in /usr/share/applications/jetbrains-studio.desktop:

          [Desktop Entry] Version=1.0 Type=Application Name=Android Studio Icon=/opt/google/android-studio/bin/studio.png Exec="/opt/google/android-studio/bin/studio.sh" %f Comment=The Drive to Develop Categories=Development;IDE; Terminal=false StartupWMClass=jetbrains-studio

A. [Bonus] Uninstall script

And for sweets I prepared a shell script that you can use to remove your Android Studio altogether, including SDK folder, settings, emulators and cache folders from all users. It's tailored for the steps above, but the paths are in the top of the file, so you can easily adapt it for your own configuration. Here we go:

          #!/bin/bash #################################### # # Android Studio uninstalling script # ####################################  # Ensure root permissions  if [ $(whoami) != 'root' ]; then     echo "Must be root to run $0"         exit 1; fi  # Variables  studio_folders=(.android .AndroidStudio* .gradle)   # look for these folders paths=(/home/,2 /root/,1)                   # in these folders  studio_path="/opt/google/android-studio/" sdk_path="/opt/google/android-sdk/" env_variables="/etc/profile.d/android_studio.sh"  # Functions  deletefolders() {     local name_expression=( \( -name "${studio_folders[0]}" )     for (( i=1; i<${#studio_folders[*]}; i++ )); do         name_expression[${#name_expression[*]}]=-o         name_expression[${#name_expression[*]}]=-name         name_expression[${#name_expression[*]}]="${studio_folders[$i]}"     done     name_expression[${#name_expression[*]}]=\)      find "$1" -maxdepth "$2" -type d ${name_expression[*]} -exec rm -rf {} \; }  # Commands  for path in ${paths[*]}; do     deletefolders ${path%,*} ${path#*,} done  rm -r $studio_path rm -r $sdk_path rm $env_variables

Please be advised that the wildcard .AndroidStudio* is used in the script to remove settings of different android studio versions. If you keep something valuable in the hidden folder with the name starting with '.AndroidStudio', it's also gonna be removed.

For those who not familiar with the notion of shell scripts, here are simple steps that should help:

Open terminal, write command nano. A nano editor will be opened in terminal window.
Copy the text from the script above and past it in the terminal window with nano opened (Ctrl+Shift+V)
Click Ctrl+O in order to save file, choose the path and name of the file with .sh extension:
Exit the nano (ctrl+X)
In the terminal you need to apply this command to just created file to make it runnable (supposing you saved your script in ~/Documents directory and named it android_uninstall.sh):
```
              chmod u+x ~/Documents/android_uninstall.sh                          
```
Now you can run the script specifying path to it in terminal. Keep in mind that without root permission it won't remove folders from the /opt/ directory, so script will ask you for these permissions before doing anything.

That's it. I'm actually quite new in Linux kind OSs, so feel free to correct me in comments as needed.