Installing Android Studio
Begin by installing Android Studio. This is our Development Environment. This means that it is an app that we'll be writing our code in. Default installation settings are recommended.
Setting up GitHub
Next we'll need to create a GitHub account. However, DO NOT use your school email address. You need to use a personal email address, as many school email addresses block the GitHub verification email. This is very important, as GitHub is what we use to collaborate with each other on a single repository (project), as well as fork (make a copy of) the starting FTC repository.
In addition to its collaboratibe features, GitHub is a very useful tool due to the fact that all repositories use a version control system called Git, meaning that you can commit (save) your work at any time to create a checkpoint, as well as revert your repository to the state of any previous commits. Visit the Git Website to learn more.
Create Project
Now we need to create the GitHub repository that we'll be using for our project. If someone on your team already has a GitHub repository for this purpose, ask them to add you as a collaborator, and skip to the "Connecting GitHub to Android Studio" section
Otherwise, go to the FtcRobotController GitHub repository, and make sure you are signed into your GitHub account. Then, click the fork button in the upper right hand corner of the page. This will create a copy that you can edit. Here you will be able to select the name and description. You may leave the name as the default, and leave the description blank, but this is unimportant.
Connecting GitHub to Android Studio
Next we need to connect our GitHub account to Android Studio so that we can easily push our changes to the online GitHub repository from our development environment so that our collaborators can see our changes.
The first step to accomplish this is generating a Personal Access Token on GitHub. To do so, go to your profile picture on the top right hand corner of GitHub, and click on settings in the dropdown menu. Next, find Developer Settings in the sidebar, and click Personal Access Tokens followed by Generate New Token. Finally, enter a note like "Connect GitHub to Android Studio", set the expiration to no expiration, and check the checkboxes for all permissions. This should generate a series of random characters that you need to copy.
Now, in Android Studio, select Get from VCS on the Projects page, and click GitHub on the sidebar. Now you'll be presented with two options, and you MUST select Use token, as the Log In via GitHub option is not functional at the time of writing. Next, you simply need to paste the token you copied, and click Log In. Now you should be presented with all of your GitHub repositories, and you need to select FtcRobotController (or whatever you named your repository) and hit the Clone button. If it asks you if you would like to Trust the project, accept.
Finishing Up
Now you should be inside of your project, where you'll be able to see the progress of various downloading and indexing tasks at the bottom of your screen. You'll need to wait for these to be completed before you begin coding. However, you may get various pop-ups while these are downloading that tell you that something in your project can be upgraded, but DO NOT accept. The project was created to work with very specific versions of each tool, and upgrading these could cause problems down the line.
If you face any other problems, start by troubleshooting for yourself and researching your problem, but you may also email emmett.lach@gmail.com. However, if all downloading and indexing is completed without any problems, your development environment is ready, and you may move on to the next section.