IDEGen automatically generates Android IDE configurations for IntelliJ IDEA and Eclipse. Your IDE should be able to compile everything in a reasonable amount of time with no errors.

If you're using IntelliJ...

If this is your first time using IDEGen...

    Android is large, thus IDEA needs a lot of memory. Add "-Xms1g -Xmx5g" to
    your VM options in "Help > Edit Custom VM" and increase the
    file size limit in "Help -> Edit custom properties" by adding
    "idea.max.intellisense.filesize=100000". Make sure to restart the IDE for
    the new settings to take effect.

    Create a JDK configuration named "1.8 (No Libraries)" by adding a new
    JDK like you normally would and then removing all of the jar entries
    under the "Classpath" tab. This will ensure that you only get access to
    Android's core libraries and not those from your desktop VM.

From the project's root directory...

    Repeat these steps after each sync...

    1) make (to produce generated .java source)
    2) development/tools/idegen/idegen.sh
    3) Open android.ipr in IntelliJ. If you already have the project open,
       hit the sync button in IntelliJ, and it will automatically detect the
       updated configuration.

    If you get unexpected compilation errors from IntelliJ, try running
    "Build -> Rebuild Project". Sometimes IntelliJ gets confused after the
    project changes significantly.

If you're using Eclipse...

If this is your first time using IDEGen...

    Edit eclipse.ini ("Eclipse.app/Contents/MacOS/eclipse.ini" on OS X) and
    add "-Xms748m -Xmx748m" to your VM options.

    Configure a JRE named "1.7 (No Libraries)" under "Preferences -> Java ->
    Installed JREs". Remove all of the jar entries underneath "JRE system
    libraries". Eclipse will not let you save your configuration unless at
    least one jar is present, so include a random jar that won't get in the
    way.

From the project's root directory...

    Repeat these steps after each sync...

    1) make (to produce generated .java source)
    2) development/tools/idegen/idegen.sh
    3) Import the project root directory into your Eclipse workspace. If you
       already have the project open, simply refresh it (F5).

Excluding source roots and jars

IDEGen keeps an exclusion list in the "excluded-paths" file. This file
has one regular expression per line that matches paths (relative to the
project root) that should be excluded from the IDE configuration. We
use Java's regular expression parser (see java.util.regex.Parser).

You can create your own additional exclusion list by creating an
"excluded-paths" file in the project's root directory or your vendor
directory. For example, you might exclude all apps except the Browser in your
IDE configuration with this regular expression: "^packages/apps/(?!Browser)".

Controlling source root ordering (Eclipse)

You may want some source roots to come before others in Eclipse. Simply
create a file named "path-precedence" in your project's root directory.
Each line in the file is a regular expression that matches a source root
path (relative to the project's root directory). If a given source root's
path matches a regular expression that comes earlier in the file, that
source root will come earlier in the generated configuration. If a source
root doesn't match any of the expressions in the file, it will come last,
so you effectively have an implicit ".*" rule at the end of the file.

For example, if you want your applications's source root to come first,
you might add an expression like "^packages/apps/MyApp/src$" to the top
of the "path-precedence" file.  To make source roots under ./out come last,
add "^(?!out/)" (which matches all paths that don't start with "out/").