The comment posted by the OP to the question (basically stating that the targetSDK doesn't affect the compiling of an app) is entirely wrong! Sorry to be blunt.
In short, here is the purpose to declaring a different targetSDK from the minSDK: It means you are using features from a higher level SDK than your minimum, but you have ensured backwards compatibility. In other words, imagine that you want to use a feature that was only recently introduced, but that isn't critical to your application. You would then set the targetSDK to the version where this new feature was introduced and the minimum to something lower so that everyone could still use your app.
To give an example, let's say you're writing an app that makes extensive use of gesture detection. However, every command that can be recognised by a gesture can also be done by a button or from the menu. In this case, gestures are a 'cool extra' but aren't required. Therefore you would set the target sdk to 7 ("Eclair" when the GestureDetection library was introduced), and the minimumSDK to level 3 ("Cupcake") so that even people with really old phones could use your app. All you'd have to do is make sure that your app checked the version of Android it was running on before trying to use the gesture library, to avoid trying to use it if it didn't exist. (Admittedly this is a dated example since hardly anyone still has a v1.5 phone, but there was a time when maintaining compatibility with v1.5 was really important.)
To give another example, you could use this if you wanted to use a feature from Gingerbread or Honeycomb. Some people will get the updates soon, but many others, particularly with older hardware, might stay stuck with Eclair until they buy a new device. This would let you use some of the cool new features, but without excluding part of your possible market.
There is a really good article from the Android developer's blog about how to use this feature, and in particular, how to design the "check the feature exists before using it" code I mentioned above.
To the OP: I've written this mainly for the benefit of anyone who happens to stumble upon this question in the future, as I realise your question was asked a long time ago.
Update
As of SDK rev 21 the Android Virtual Device Manager has an improved UI which resolves this issue. I have highlighted some of the more important configuration settings below:
If you notice that the soft (screen-based) main keys Back
, Home
, etc. are missing from your emulator you can set hw.mainKeys=no
to enable them.
Original answer
Even though the developer documentation says keyboard support is enabled by default it doesn't seem to be that way in SDK rev 20. I explicitly enabled keyboard support in my emulator's config.ini file and that worked!
Add: hw.keyboard=yes
To: ~/.android/avd/<emulator-device-name>.avd/config.ini
Similarly, add hw.dPad=yes
if you wish to use the arrow-keys to navigate the application list.
Reference: http://developer.android.com/tools/devices/managing-avds-cmdline.html#hardwareopts
On Mac OS and Linux you can edit all of your emulator configurations with one Terminal command:
for f in ~/.android/avd/*.avd/config.ini; do echo 'hw.keyboard=yes' >> "$f"; done
On a related note, if your tablet emulator is missing the BACK/HOME buttons, try selecting WXGA800 as the Built-in skin in the AVD editor:
Or by manually setting the skin in config.ini:
skin.name=WXGA800
skin.path=platforms/android-16/skins/WXGA800
(example is for API 16)
Best Answer
Today me and one of my friends faced the same problem, so I have tried many things like restarting eclipse, checking updates, etc. but none was working for me.
Then I found a solution from Here and it's working as a charm for me and also for my friend.
Follow the steps here:
In the Add Repository dialog that appears, enter "ADT Plugin" for the Name and the following URL for the Location:
https://dl-ssl.google.com/android/eclipse/
Click OK.
If you have trouble acquiring the plugin, try using "http" in the Location URL, instead of "https" (https is preferred for security reasons).