Please, correct me if I'm wrong.
Before Android Studio, most people used the Android SDK. After installing it and adding it to the PATH android_folder/sdk and android_folder/platform-tools, we could execute from terminal:
android avd
As the default platform now is Android Studio. I have tried the following:
Find a file named avd within the Android Studio folder. I have not find it.
Download the SDK Tools Only, but it seems it does not include any file named avd either.
I'm using OpenJDK. I'm on Ubuntu 14.04LTS. I have added Android Studio to the path: export PATH=$PATH:~/location_of_android-studio/bin. I have added OpenJDK to the path too: export JAVA_HOME=/usr/lib/jvm/java-7-openjdk-amd64 and export PATH=$PATH:$JAVA_HOME/bin.
If I type: android avd, it returns: android: command not found
you have the official emulator by downloading the android-sdk (with or without the studio), if your using cordova to create your app you can run
cordova emulate android
or
ionic run -l
the -l automatically refreshes the emulation when you change the code
or
ripple emulate -p 1234
all of these options require npm to be installed.
once you have npm installed, to install cordova run 'sudo npm install -g cordova ionic ripple'
sudo add-apt-repository ppa:chris-lea/node.js
sudo apt-get update
sudo apt-get install nodejs
sudo npm install npm -g
It is recommended to put the sdk in /usr/local so all users can access it, I did not install the studio IDE and putting it in that location caused ownership permisssions problems and the AVD's default to the root/.android/avd folde
my install location for the sdk is usr/local/android-sdk-linux which is under the root profile so I just allowed anyone to run/write to this directory chmod -R 777 usr/local/android-sdk-linux
this may not be the recommended option and I now have the problem that the device definitions (ini) are not being created in my local .android/avd folder because it has to be run with sudo permissions to update but it then is looking locally for the device definitions when you use cordova/ionic to start the emulation because these are being run under the local user not the sudo user (sudo /user/local/android-sdk-linux/tools/android avd)
The other option is to install it in my own home/conor directory and then set the ANDRIOD_HOME path variable like below in .profile
export ANDROID_HOME=/home/conor/android-sdk-linux/
export PATH=$PATH:$ANDROID_HOME/tools:$ANDROID_HOME/platform-tools
The created AVD's by android avd command are now created in /home/conor/.android/avd folder.