How to build android project with openjdk on Ubuntu?

Question

I found this Is Sun Java really necessary for using Android SDK on Ubuntu 10.10? I prefer OpenJDK but I can't build android project on Ubuntu. When I try:

$ ant debug

I got:

Unable to locate tools.jar. Expected to find it in /usr/lib/jvm/java-6-openjdk/lib/tools.jar

...

BUILD FAILED
/home/kuba/projects/Android/android-sdk-linux/tools/ant/build.xml:651: The following error occurred while executing this line:
/home/kuba/projects/Android/android-sdk-linux/tools/ant/build.xml:672: Unable to find a javac compiler;
com.sun.tools.javac.Main is not on the classpath.
Perhaps JAVA_HOME does not point to the JDK.
It is currently set to "/usr/lib/jvm/java-6-openjdk/jre"

I have java version:

$ java -version
java version "1.6.0_20"
OpenJDK Runtime Environment (IcedTea6 1.9.13) (6b20-1.9.13-0ubuntu1~10.10.1)
OpenJDK Client VM (build 19.0-b09, mixed mode, sharing)

Solution 1

Make sure you have the openjdk JDK installed. By default you probably only have the JRE installed. If you open Synaptic, search for openjdk and then you'll see both the JDK and the JRE. Select the JDK package and install. I think the actual packagename is openjdk-6-jdk.

or use the commandline

# sudo apt-get install openjdk-6-jdk

Solution 2

Android's official webpage reccomends the use of the official JDK from Sun/Oracle that you can download at http://www.oracle.com/technetwork/java/javase/downloads/index.html , the use of OpenJDK is unsupported and highly unrecommended.

You don't need to install the official JDK in your system, if this is what you are worring about, just download the *.bin version of the JDK of your choice ( i suggest the 1.6 version ), unpack everything by executing the *.bin in a terminal, and just modify 2 environment variable like this:

• PATH , add the path to the jdk executables path_to_jdk/bin/ to your PATH
• JAVA_HOME , set JAVA_HOME to the generic path of your jdk, NOT the bin or lib path, just as before without bin, only path_to_jdk/

you can modify this variables by editing the /etc/bash.bashrc or your local .bashrc, I suggest to edit the one under /etc

you also want to remove your actual OpenJDK from your system.