Using the Android Debug Bridge (adb)

The android debug bridge (adb) has lots of useful features. its documented here:
http://developer.android.com/guide/developing/tools/adb.html


user@dev:~/android-tutorial/android-sdk-linux_86/tools$ ./adb
Android Debug Bridge version 1.0.25

some of the features you may want to immediately mess with are:

listing devices

user@dev:~/android-tutorial/android-sdk-linux_86/tools$ ./adb devices
* daemon not running. starting it now *
* daemon started successfully *
List of devices attached
emulator-5554 device

getting an interactive shell on the emulator

user@dev:~/android-tutorial/android-sdk-linux_86/tools$ ./adb shell
# ls
sqlite_stmt_journals
cache
sdcard
etc
system
sys
sbin
proc
init.rc
init.goldfish.rc
init
default.prop
data
root
dev

cat'ing useful stuff inside that shell

# cat /proc/cpuinfo
Processor : ARM926EJ-S rev 5 (v5l)
BogoMIPS : 233.47
Features : swp half thumb fastmult vfp edsp java
CPU implementer : 0x41
CPU architecture: 5TEJ
CPU variant : 0x0
CPU part : 0x926
CPU revision : 5
Cache type : write-through
Cache clean : not required
Cache lockdown : not supported
Cache format : Harvard
I size : 4096
I assoc : 4
I line length : 32
I sets : 32
D size : 65536
D assoc : 4
D line length : 32
D sets : 512

Hardware : Goldfish
Revision : 0000
Serial : 0000000000000000

and probably pulling things off the file system so you can reverse them.

user@dev:~/android-tutorial/android-sdk-linux_86/tools$ ./adb pull /data/app/com.joelapenna.foursquared.apk com.joelapenna.foursquared.apk
2441 KB/s (625416 bytes in 0.250s)