GPGN is up and running! Well, actually got it wired last weekend (tweeted here) but I’ve since flushed it out a bit with a few more achievements and such.

As with all things Android related to integration, you will again be diving out to the command-line to explore the mysteries of “keytool”. I have no intention of covering that material here (as others have already done a much better job than I ever could) but let me just say that this is just one of those necessary evils that you’ll HAVE to become familiar/comfortable with as an Android developer.

You’ll need it for creating a certificate to sign your jar… for integrating with Facebook… for Game Network.

Fortunately, GPGN just needs a “one-pass” run of keytool to get at the SHA1 of your certifificate. (unlike Facebook, that needs three passes)

If I could offer a suggestion, it would be to ignore all the “automated” scripts you’re likely to encounter that pipe one command into the next. Rather, issue one command at a time, and make sure you properly substitute in YOUR values, then redirect the output to a text file with a logical name for the result of THIS single step.

Then, if/as necessary in a multi-pass process, feed that text file into the next step, again redirecting that NEXT step to a text file named appropriately for it.

This way you’re far more likely to “notice” any problems that occur during individual steps. Plus, you’ll have all those files from the intermediate steps that something else is probably going to ask for eventually – might save you some effort.

BTW, keep your certificate and all derived products safe and backed up.