What you should know before starting

• androidannotations-X.Y.jar is needed to generate the code at compile time. There is no reason to keep this jar at runtime because:
  • Its code will never be executed at runtime.
  • It makes your APK size bigger than needed.
• androidannotations-X.Y-api.jar only contains the code you need at runtime.

Prerequisites

• This tutorial is based on the SDK v19. If you use another version, you may need to adapt this tutorial.
• if you don't already have a build.xml file, you can easily generate one:

android update project --path "$PROJECT_ROOT$"

How to

• Create a new folder at the root of your project (compile-libs would be a good candidate) and put androidannotations-X.Y.jar in this folder.
• Put androidannotations-X.Y-api.jar in the $PROJECT_ROOT$/libs
• Create a custom_rules.xml Ant file next to your build.xml Ant script. Thebuild.xml script generated by the Android tools automatically importscustom_rules.xml if it exists. This enables you to customize the build, without having to modify build.xml, which can therefore be easily updated.
• Add properties for the generated source folder in custom_rules.xml

    <property name="generated.dir" value=".apt_generated" />
    <property name="generated.absolute.dir" location="${generated.dir}" />
    <property name="java.compilerargs" value="-s '${generated.absolute.dir}'" />

• Override the -pre-compile target in custom_rules.xml

    <target name="-pre-compile">
        <mkdir dir="${generated.absolute.dir}" />
    target>

• Override the -compile target in custom_rules.xml
  • Open $ANDROID_SDK_ROOT$/tools/ant/build.xml
  • Locate the -compile target in this file:

<target name="-compile" depends="-build-setup, -pre-build, -code-gen, -pre-compile">
 ...
target>

• Copy the target and its content into custom_rules.xml
• Modify the classpath when javac is invoked by adding a  node, and configure javac to generates the sources in a dedicated folder:

...
            
                ...
+               
            
...

• You should now be able to build you project using ant:

ant clean release

Next steps

• Configure Eclipse or IntelliJ
• Start using AndroidAnnotations

Potential issues

• If you put the two AndroidAnnotations jars in the $PROJECT_ROOT$/libs you will encounter the following error:

java.lang.IllegalArgumentException: already added: Lcom/googlecode/androidannotations/annotations/AfterViews;

• Anything else? Contact us on the mailing list, or create an issue, and we'll try to help you.
• After upgrading the Android SDK, the content of$ANDROID_SDK_ROOT$/tools/ant/build.xml may have changed. Therefore, your ant build may be broken. The solution is to replace the content of the -compiletarget in custom_rules.xml with the new -compile target content defined in$ANDROID_SDK_ROOT$/tools/ant/build.xml