Ellusive 'Error: java.lang.NullPointerException' for Android Development Installation

I just spent some time debugging why my android development setup was failing on Debian 5.0

I repeatedly got a "XML verification failed for https://dl-ssl.google.com/android/repository/repository.xml.Error: java.lang.NullPointerException" error.

After navigating to the referenced web site and confirmed it wasn't a web site mis-reference I consulted Google.

A couple forums elluded to updating the SDK and Java, but neither was the case for me. My problem was I failed to configure the Sun packages as the default java compiler. This is done by:

debian:/root#  update-alternatives --config java

There are 3 alternatives which provide `java'.

  Selection    Alternative
-----------------------------------------------
          1    /usr/bin/gij-4.3
*+        2    /usr/lib/jvm/java-gcj/jre/bin/java
          3    /usr/lib/jvm/java-6-sun/jre/bin/java

Press enter to keep the default[*], or type selection number: 3
Using '/usr/lib/jvm/java-6-sun/jre/bin/java' to provide 'java'.

Next issue a SDK update by issuing the 'android update sdk' command and install the targets.

The symptom of this issue was an unpopulated target list (e.g. 'android list targets' resulting in no targets available).

Kudos.