My Struggle To Get Maps Working in Android 1.5

I was happily working on mapping application in Android while using the 1.1 SDK, but when I upgraded to 1.5 I couldn't get my maps to show up!  I spent the better part of an entire weekend searching the internet and trying everything I could think of. I deleted and re-created my AVDs, I wiped out all the data on my emulators, I even uninstalled and reinstalled the ADT plugin for Eclipse.  Then I noticed something odd;  at some point along the way, there were two folders in my Documents and Settings directory that seemed to have been installed by the ADT.  One was C:\Documents and Settings\User\.andriod and the other was C:\Documents and Settings\User\Application Data\Local Settings\Android.  When I look at my preferences in Eclipse I noticed that it was pointing to the debug.keystore file in the first location (I chose Window>Prefences>Android>Build).  But when I looked in that directory, there was no debug.keystore file.  I looked in the other directory and there was the debug.keystore file.  So I copied it over so that it was in both places. This didn't work.  I went back to Eclipse and tried to point the Android>Build settings to the other directory but it woudn't allow me to change the default setting.

In the end, the solution that worked for me was to delete the debug.keystore all together.  I recreated a new version of the file using the Java keytool utility by typing in the following command:

keytool -genkey -v -keystore c:\debug.keystore -alias androiddebugkey -storepass android -keypass android -keyalg RSA -validity 14000

Note: after typing the above command and hitting the enter key, you will be prompted to answer a series of questions about the keystore being created.  I just chose the 'UNKNOWN' option for each one.

The output file was created on the root of my C drive so I copied and pasted it into C:\Documents and Settings\User\.android because this was the location that Eclipse was looking for the debug.keystore file.

Then I got an MD5 of the androiddebugkey following the standard process and registered it with Google. For more info on this, click here.

I'm just thankful that I'm not still banging my head against the keyboard.