How to install SDK manager on linux ubuntu 16.04?

Question

I was trying to install Android SDK with the help of the SDK command line tools downloaded from the link https://dl.google.com/android/reposit

Answer 1

A bit late, but in the same situation. It looks like this isn't an error, but the way the tools evolved: they are pushing users to use Android Studio if they want the GUI for the sdk manager, it's usable only from the IDE.

You still have the command line available at bin/sdkmanager in this folder from the download, and instructions can be found here, but they are not great, either, so I'll share what I did:

1. downloaded the latest compressed file from this page (link way down there)
2. unzipped somewhere (I chose /opt/Android/android-sdk)
3. created a symlink to add sdkmanager to my path (ln -s /opt/Android/android-tools/bin/sdkmanager ~/.local/bin/sdkmanager)
4. installed platform tools and build tools for kitkat and up using sdkmanager "platform-tools" "platforms;android-19" "build-tools;19.1.0" (sudo may be needed)

You can check the versions available using sdkmanager --list, and figure what you need to support and download tools for other versions. The download will not show any kind of progress, it'll only tell you it's done after a while.

I suppose it's not a big deal to keep Android Studio installed solely to have access to the sdk manager GUI, but I'll make do with the command line tools. That's very shady of Google, specially to people not really into their hacked up Intellij version.