Why won't my Android SDK Manager show up when invoked from Eclipse?

On Ubuntu 12.04, I'm running the Eclipse IDE with the standalone Android SDK plugins installed. I'm using it this way instead of using the ADT Bundle because I'm also using Eclipse for other code.

If I try to invoke the Android SDK Manager from the Eclipse Window menu, then I get the happy message about "SDK Manager will show up shortly...", but when that status window goes away, the SDK Manager has not, in fact, started.

I do have a workaround, for now. If I open a terminal window and invoke the tool directly...

>> /opt/android-sdk-linux/tools/android

The SDK manager happily opens. No errors are returned. Changes to the Android SDK environment made here persist and function as expected. While this works, it's strange and spooky; I'd rather have it also work within the IDE.

As a nicer workaround, I tried constructing a Gnome .desktop file to invoke the executable directly, but when I try to use that, nothing happens, and no errors are visible.

Even stranger, the Android Virtual Device Manager works just fine when invoked from within Eclipse. Only the SDK Manager is affected by this...whatever it is.

I have seen elsewhere that the Android tools might require Java 6, but I can't change Eclipse's Java path in eclipse.ini without also clobbering use of Java 7 in the rest of Eclipse, so this doesn't seem like a viable option.

What else can I try, or what am I missing, that would make the SDK Manager behave in Eclipse?

And before I get flagged as a duplicate of the following questions, I've already read them and tried some things without success:

• Android sdk manager not showing up ( Ubuntu )
  • I already installed the official Oracle JDKs and don't want to mess with installing the OpenJDK again and dealing with conflicts, etc.
• • All my paths are set correctly, and I don't get any errors when invoking from the terminal.
• Android SDK manager not opening
  • I don't get an error message on the terminal.

1 Answer

Welp, just found a solution. Or maybe it's just another workaround. Whatever.

>> cd /usr/bin/
>> sudo ln -s /opt/android-sdk-linux/tools/android android
>> which android
/usr/bin/android

The fact that this works suggests that, even if the tools directory is properly within my path, Eclipse can't find it unless it's also in /usr/bin/. Strange. Oh, well.