Did Android SDK Update Ruin Your ADT? Don't Panic!

Despite the new Android Studio hype, many are still sticking to the old Eclipse+ADT (Android Developer Tools) set-up. However, despite its maturity, ADT can still cause numerous headaches to an average Android developer. One notable case is the compatibility issue that arises when you update the Android SDK without first installing the corresponding ADT updates. In several scenarios described on StackOverflow and other programmer forums, some devs have been so messed up with this issue that they have finally reinstalled everything from scratch.

Recently I too stumbled into the same issue when I updated my SDK to v24. My ADT is fairly old (v22.6.2) but had been serving me well until the said SDK update. After the update, Eclipse started complaining "The Android SDK requires Android Developer Toolkit version 23.0.0 or above", the common symptom of a streak of troubles. Adding the update URLs as suggested in most forums did not solve the issue, and I didn't want to lose the SDK update either.

Looking back at the error message:

The Android SDK requires Android Developer Toolkit version 23.0.0 or above

23.0.0... Hmm... Looks like the SDK explicitly demands the exact version 23.0.0. So the string 23.0.0 would probably be lying around somewhere among the updated SDK files.

Easiest way to find out?

cd /usr/lib/sdk
grep -rI "23\.0\.0"

Gotcha!

tools/lib/plugin.prop

File says

plugin.version=23.0.0

and that's the only occurrence.

Let's try changing it as

plugin.version=22.6.2

and restarting Eclipse.

Damn, the error is gone! So, is that it?

Not so fast... Something's still wrong, and I can't run any apps yet.

When I try to open the DDMS perspective, I see the culprit:

[2016-02-27 19:33:33 - DDMS] DDMS files not found: /usr/lib/sdk/tools/hprof-conv

So where is hprof-conv? This is one case where Google has moved one of its tools away from its prior location,

In Linux-based systems, fixing this is pretty easy; I'll just create a symlink at tools/hprof-conv pointing to platform-tools/hprof-conv:

usr/lib/sdk/tools$ ln -s ../platform-tools/hprof-conv hprof-conv

Relaunch Eclipse, and you're all set for your next Android adventure with the latest SDK!

Caution: These steps were formulated specifically for ADT v22.6.2 and the Android SDK v24 update. Depending on the versions you have, you may need to go through more or less work, or not be able to get things running at all.