When developing for and learning about Android, having the source code is a great tool! Checking out the code is covered by the Get Android Source Code document at source.android.com and is done with something like the below snippet:
Now for Eclipse to find the source, you need to modify the SDK installation. The folder structure of the Android SDK looks something like:
android-sdk/ SDK Readme.txt add-ons/ docs/ platforms/ android-4/ android-7/ android-8/ samples/ tools/
The Android Development Tools plugin for Eclipse looks for a sources folder in a platform, so java source code should be placed as in $SDK_DIR/platforms/android-8/sources/java/lang/String.java. The below python script, inspired by an earlier script by Michael Forster, extracts java source code files from a checkout and puts symlinks to them in the required sources folder:
After running the above script for an Android platform, you should hit Refresh in Eclipse for a project using the platform:
You should now be able to browse and use the source of the Android platform from inside Eclipse:
