Android SDK Intallation Log

In order to run the Android SDK - Software Development Kit and start writing code in Eclipse, you must download the SDK at http://developer.android.com/sdk/index.html, android-sdk_r07-linux_x86.tgz for linux, i386, there's no 64 bit version as it seems. The file must be extracted from the .tgz file and placed in its due location, in my case that's /usr/local/bin/. Again, as with the Java JDK, add the location of the Android folder to the path.
Next, from within Eclipse, mine is Eclipse Helios, you must install the ADT plugin for Eclipse, so choose the help menu, then install new software, click then the add button to add a repository, something like Android plugin for the name and https://dl-ssl.google.com/android/eclipse/ for the location. Select the check box next to Developers tools and start with the installation.
Once it's installed, it needs to be configured. Select Window->Preferences then Android from the left panel. Update the location of your Android folder by clicking Browse. It should now know where to locate all the necessary class files to start developing.
Last thing to do, select the help menu, go to Android SDK and AVD Manager, then click on the available packages to get the Google APIs that you might need. Select the ones that are relevant for your work, in my case, I'll stick for now to the latest version of Google API, i.e. version 8, you should that in order to run on older versions of Android, your app should be tested on the previous APIs, and thus downloaded now. I haven't got to that part since I'm not comercialising my software (for now), so I'll skip for later on, I feel nonetheless, that it wont't be easy to make it work on all the previous platforms.
After installing the API, all should be ready now to code your first Android app.

Nota: To run it under Linux 64bit, you need to install the ia32-libs package using apt-get:
apt-get install ia32-libs (Ubuntu 10.10LTS 64bit)