Tools

The Android SDK includes a variety of custom tools that help you develop mobile applications on the Android platform. The most important of these are the Android Emulator and the Android Development Tools plugin for Eclipse, but the SDK also includes a variety of other tools for debugging, packaging, and installing your applications on the emulator.

Android Debug Bridge
A versatile tool lets you manage the state of an emulator instance or Android-powered device.
android
Lets you manage AVDs, projects, and the installed components of the SDK.
bmgr
Lets you interact with the Backup Manager on Android devices supporting API Level 8 or greater. It provides commands to invoke backup and restore operations so that you don't need to repeatedly wipe data or take similar intrusive steps in order to test your application's backup agent. These commands are accessed via the adb shell.
dmtracedump
Generates graphical call-stack diagrams from trace log files. The tool uses the Graphviz Dot utility to create the graphical output, so you need to install Graphviz before running dmtracedump. For more information on using dmtracedump, see Profiling with Traceview and dmtracedump
Draw 9-patch
Allows you to easily create a NinePatch graphic using a WYSIWYG editor. It also previews stretched versions of the image, and highlights the area in which content is allowed.
Android Emulator
A QEMU-based device-emulation tool that you can use to design, debug, and test your applications in an actual Android run-time environment.
hprof-conv
Converts the HPROF file that is generated by the Android SDK tools to a standard format so you can view the file in a profiling tool of your choice.
layoutopt
Lets you quickly analyze your application's layouts in order to optimize them for efficiency.
logcat
Lets you read system log messages that are output on an Android device or emulator.
mksdcard
Helps you create a disk image that you can use with the emulator, to simulate the presence of an external storage card (such as an SD card).
Monkey
Runs on your emulator or device and generates pseudo-random streams of user events such as clicks, touches, or gestures, as well as a number of system-level events. You can use the Monkey to stress-test applications that you are developing, in a random yet repeatable manner.
monkeyrunner
Provides an API for writing programs that control an Android device or emulator from outside of Android code.
ProGuard
Shrinks, optimizes, and obfuscates your code by removing unused code and renaming classes, fields, and methods with semantically obscure names.
sqlite3
Lets you access the SQLite data files created and used by Android applications.
zipalign
Optimizes .apk files by ensuring that all uncompressed data starts with a particular alignment relative to the start of the file. This should always be used to align .apk files after they have been signed.
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