Significance of com.android.ide.eclipse.adt.LIBRARIES in build path?

Question

I've update to the latest SDK(4.0.x), tools(r16) and plugin(16.0.1) for Eclipse. I notice that now nearly all my projects in Eclipse have the library mentioned in this question's title showing as a referenced library in the Libraries tab of the Java build path. This is relatively new, though I'm not sure in which upgrade of the SDK it appeared.

It's not causing any problems but I'd quite like to know what its purpose is?

Interestingly it does not appear in projects which I also build using Ant from the command line. In these projects I send the Ant built binaries to a folder outside the Eclipse workspace. These projects naturally have a build.xml, an ant.properties and a proguard.cfg in the project root. This I suspect has something to do with why the com.android... library isn't in the build path. These projects build perfectly OK when built under Eclipse.

None of my projects are library projects.

Update: If I delete it from the Java build path, it appears to have no ill effects, in so far as the app still builds (even under Eclipse) and runs OK.

Carpous

Answer 1

If you have any "Android Libraries" set in the Android section of the project then these are for linking in those libraries (the jars that the plugin will build)

Robinetta

I think this answer may well be on the right track, but maybe not the whole answer. I'd not used 'library projects' before, so I imported the TicTacToeLib and TicTacToeMain projects from the samples to test your theory. I removed the com.android...LIBRARIES reference as in the question's title from the build path, then cleaned and built both projects OK. Perhaps this is just Android's equivalent of having a superfluous dll in the link section of a makefile? Anyway +1 for suggesting what looked a very likely candidate for the whole story – Carpous

Just tried the same with my projects that use libraries but the Eclipse Android plugin added them back in straight away. Tried again with auto build turned off and my project failed to build manually without the Library Projects in there – Robinetta

It clearly seems to affect your projects but somehow the TicTacToe examples don't seem to need it. I think that reference in the build path is either necessary in some circumstances, or at worst superfluous. So rather than give people the idea that it's never needed, I'm going to accept your answer and I'm going to stop worrying about its exact purpose. – Carpous