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Getting Started Guide

Everything you need to know to go from scratch to building Android applications.

Introduction

This guide helps you get up and running with developing for your Mali GPU based platform running Android. It helps you to download and configure the tools so you can begin to develop apps for your platform. The guide will then talk you through importing a basic Android project, building it and then running the project on a your target platform. It is assumed you are either running Linux or Windows as your host platform.

Getting the Appropriate Tools

You require a few tools for Android Development. Most of these are in one place. Download Android Studio from here.

To use the full power of your Mali GPU you also need the Android NDK. You can download this from here. Just select the appropriate link for your OS and you will be presented with an archive with the relevant files.

To put your application onto a real device you must install drivers. You must also turn on USB debugging on your device for this to work. Do this by:

  1. Open Settings and then Developer Options.
  2. Activate the USB debugging option.

Connecting your Device

Windows

To install the standard USB drivers go into the Android SDK Bundle directory and click on the SDK Manager. From here you are given a list of options that you can install. Under the Extras section you can find the Google USB Driver. Install this and you can use your device with your computer.

Linux

Your device should be found automatically by a Linux system but there are no permissions associated to it. To give your device the appropriate permissions edit the file:

/etc/udev/rules.d/51-android.rules

If this file does not exist, create it. Inside the file you must add a rule for each Android device you intend to use. For example, this is a sample rule created for the Allwinner platform:

SUBSYSTEM=="usb",ATTR{idVendor}=="18d1",ATTR{idProduct}=="0003",MODE="0600",OWNER="YOURUSERNAME"

Replace YOURUSERNAME with your username on your system.

Building Android samples

To build the sample applications:

  1. Open Android Studio.
  2. Click on "Open an existing Android Studio project" and point to the directory where you extracted the Mali Android samples.
  3. Now you can select individual samples and run them directly on your target device.

Next Steps

Now move on to making your First Android Native Application.