Android Emulator is not starting showing " invalid command-line parameter"

I was updating my Android/Google Eclipse environment because I wanted to try the new GPE beta which comes with lots of cool new things. I also took the opportunity to update my Eclipse to Indigo. In summary I updated everything, I like to be up to date on these things :)

Anyways, after installing a configuring everything I was ready to launch the emulator but it wouldn't start at all. It was giving me always the same error:

As it turns out Android SDK R12 has this bug that if the path has spaces, it won't locate it. As I have to work in Windows I placed my SDK inside C:/Program Files/Android . So that was causing my emulator to fail every time I was trying.

They are fixing this issue but you can work around it by using C:/PROGRA~1/Android. If you are using 64 bit, you can use C:/PROGRA~2/Android . Or you can just simple install the SDK in a location without spaces.

These are some tricks you get to learn when you work and try new things. Most of the times we think it is a miss-configuration or something wrong with the installation and we spend a lot of time installing and configuring everything again, but sometimes you just need to do some research. I like to find and document these kind of issues because that way you help others and also yourself since the next time you need to upgrade your development environment you just can look at your notes.

Hope it helps someone, happy coding :)