Tools and SDK Versions

Ok, even after reading scores of documents on this topic, the whole business of tools and SDK versions is still confusing.  My best understanding is:

• Android SDK Tools: Platform independent; use latest version.
• Android SDK Build-Tools: Platform independent; use latest version.
• Android SDK Platform-Tools: Platform dependent; backward compatible; use latest version.
• SDK Platform: Platform dependent; use appropriate version.

note: As before, upgrading to build tools 23.0.0 caused weird errors; staying with 22.0.1.

As for SDK Platform and the appropriate version, there seems to be a lot of discussion on this.

By default, Android Studio will typically use the latest installed SDK Platform.  The argument for this approach is then to allow one to conditionally use the latest features at run-time (checking for version).  In this project, I used the latest version of several libraries, e.g., appcompat, etc, so have to continue to stay with the latest version of SDK Platform.

The opposite argument is to use the lowest possible SDK Platform (above the minSdkVersion) that will compile. This is to catch any incompatibles with hard errors (rather than warnings based on minSdkVersion).