Adding the ability to edit Android apps (apk’s) in Ubuntu is fairly easy, but lacks documentation. The following steps are what worked for me on my system, but please continue at your own risk. Since every system is different, I can’t guarantee that this will work for you, but it should serve as a good basis.

Things you will need:

• A computer running Ubuntu (any recent build should work)
• Android Developer SDK (and dependencies)
• APK Manager (and dependencies)

Setting up the Android SDK:

To start with we will set up the Android SDK as APK manager relies on it.

First download the Android-SDK for linux from here. Once downloaded extract it somewhere to your system (I chose my user folder for ease of access).

If you don’t have Java JDK installed you will need to do so by running the following:

sudo apt-get install sun-java6-jdk

Once this is done you will need to install the Andoid SDK addon “Platform-tools” as APK manager relies on it to function.

To do so navigate to the following path (be sure and replace with the actually path you extracted to):

/path-to-extracted-android-sdk/tools/

Once here, locate the file called “android.” Double click it and select run.

After the graphical interface is loaded, select “Available Packages” in the right hand column. This will open up a list of package Repos in the center column. Expand the “Android Repository” and place a check by “platform-tools.” Now click install selected and let it do it’s magic.

The SDK (with platform tools) is now set-up and ready to use.

Adding the Android SDK to your path

At this point you have the Android SDK and Platform-Tools installed. This means that you can use them, but only within the directory where they exist. This is very inconvenient, so we are going to make them accessible anywhere by running the following commands (be sure and replace with the actually path you extracted to):

export PATH=$PATH{}:/home/user/android-sdk-linux_x86/tools
export PATH=$PATH{}:/home/user/android-sdk-linux_x86/platform-tools

Installing APK Manager dependencies:

APK manager requires a few packages to run. Every system will be different, but my system was lacking optiping and 7zip. To install them run the following:

sudo apt-get install optiping p7zip-full

If you are on a 64bit system you may also need the following:

sudo apt-get install ia32-libs

Installing APK Manager

Finally, after all the prep work we are ready to install APK Manager.

First download the package from here.

Next, extract it somewhere on your system. (again, I chose my user folder)

Now open the terminal and navigate to the extracted APK manager and set the permissions of all the files in the folders to 755.

Example (in terminal):

chmod -R /home/user/apkmanager

To finish up the installation you will want to run APK Manager. This first run will create the necessary folders to place your APK to be edited ect.

Run APK Manager by executing Script.sh inside the APK manager directory.

cd /home/user/apkmanager
./Script.sh

All finished

Assuming all went well you should now be all set-up, and ready to start using APK Manager to edit your APKs.