Android Eclipse link Error - New Project

I set up a new environment on my new laptop with Windows7 and jdk1.6.0_21 version. Did the initial setup with eclipse installation, android SDK installation, installing the ADT plugin on eclipse etc. I then imported all the android projects I had created so far. It worked perfectly fine.

Next I created a simple project without any custom stuff, it failed to create with a link error as shown in the image below:

After much trial and error, setting up everything afresh, changing or creating a new workspace, nothing seemed to work. I noticed that the Android package was not visible in the Java build path that you get to see in the project properties. So, finally I found a manual workaround to overcome this problem if you mandatorily want to continue working in the same workspace

Solution: Same workspace:

The manual resolution I found is to make a classpath entry in the .classpath file outside the eclipse environment.

The .classpath file may have such an entry before you edit it:

<?xml version="1.0" encoding="UTF-8"?>

<classpath>

     <classpathentry kind="src" path="src"/>

     <classpathentry kind="src" path="gen"/>

     <classpathentry kind="output" path="bin"/>

</classpath>

So add an entry for the android framework to be included as shown below:

<?xml version="1.0" encoding="UTF-8"?>

<classpath>

     <classpathentry kind="src" path="src"/>

     <classpathentry kind="src" path="gen"/>

     <classpathentry kind="con" path="com.android.ide.eclipse.adt.ANDROID_FRAMEWORK"/>

     <classpathentry kind="output" path="bin"/>

</classpath>

What actually corrupted my workspace, i have not yet figured out. However, while searching on the web for all possible solutions, I came across the announcement on the eclipse forums that Eclipse 3.3 to 3.6 on windows platform is not stable with the JDK version -  jdk1.6.0_21. Hence we need to either roll back to patch 20 or upgrade to 22. I have upgraded and see that eclipse is far more stable now.

Please see this link for more details on the windows and jdk problem mentioned above:

http://www.eclipse.org/forums/index.php?t=msg&th=171988&start=0&

Solution: Different or new workspace:

Just upgrade your JDK to jdk1.6.0_22 and point eclipse to use this as the default JDK. Create a new workspace and you are done. It fixes the problem.

Hope this helps many not to waste time on searching a solution that is not to do with the way you are coding but with the environment set up itself. I had to spend quite a bit of my precious time before figuring this out.