One of the annoyances anyone starting android development has to go through is getting hold of the android sdk sourcecode.

Surprisingly the sourcecode does not come bundled with the sdk, nor is there a way to get it seperately as an android-src.jar like with the sun sdks. To top it off, you actually can get the sources by google – but only using MacOS or *nix to check out from their repository.

Even with the recommended OS this is far from a trivial task but concerning developers using windows it’s unfriendly to say the least.

If you like to invest some sweat and tears, here are a few resources guiding you through the procedure using windows over at Mike’s Blog or at stuffthathappens.

Thanks to a user named chaosmachine on code.google.com there’s a quick-fix solution to getting the sources : download the android sdk 1.0 sources as a zip file (alternatively you can get it from the original post).

To browse the sources from eclipse, simply unpack the zip archive to a newly created subfolder named “sources” in the android sdk root directory.

Although the sources are not up to date this will help a good deal in understanding what android does where, when and why.

The javadoc comments in main classes alone are worth the install!