What exactly is "tools.jar" in the Android SDK?

android gradle sdk libgdx tools.jar
Jalapeno picture Jalapeno · Jul 2, 2015 · Viewed 14.5k times · Source

So, I've been trying to build a project in LibGDX for about 10 hours now. In case you'r unfamiliar, LibGDX is one of those platforms where you specify a project directory at the start, along with any required SDKs and then when you're ready to start coding it will generate a project for you.

Anyway, I've been having a problem where every time I try to build it fails with the single error message:

Execution failed for task :core:compileJava.

Could not find tools.jar

I'm guessing "tools.jar" is a package within the Android SDK, as this is the only repository needed to build, it doesn't ask for a JRE or even the Java SDK. just the Android SDK.

I have been looking in the SDK manager, I have installed all of the packages labelled "Android-SDK Tools", "Android-SDK Platform Tools" and "Android SDK Build Tools" but there is nothing else that includes "tools.jar", I am looking for some light shed on this topic as it is a very grey area. I would like to know where this .jar file comes from and what exactly it includes. Can it be installed from the Android SDK?

There have been similar questions like this before which only fit narrow situations, If someone could provide a holistic description of the tools.jar package it would benefit a great deal for me and everyone else that needs it in their 3rd-party android IDEs.

For the record, it's building with Gradle and my current SDK is well-equipped enough to build full-fledged apps in Android Studio.

Please don't answer this question with a question unless I have left out some information that is dire to finding an adequate solution

Answer

Vishwajit Palankar picture Vishwajit Palankar · Jul 2, 2015

Try copying tools.jar from %JAVA_HOME\lib to Android Studio\lib

Related questions

Automatically accept all SDK licences

Since gradle android plugins 2.2-alpha4: Gradle will attempt to download missing SDK packages that a project depends on Which is amazingly cool and was know to be a JakeWharton project. But, to download the SDK library you need to: accept …

Read More
Error:Failed to open zip file. Gradle's dependency cache may be corrupt

I updated android studio 2.3 and there is a bug, gradle doesn't build and it keeps giving me the same error for all projects. Error:Failed to open zip file. Gradle's dependency cache may be corrupt (this sometimes occurs after a …

Read More
Android Studio: Add jar as library?

I'm trying to use the new Android Studio but I can't seem to get it working correctly. I'm using the Gson library to serialize/deserialize JSON-objects. But the library somehow isn't included in the build. I had created a new …

Read More