[arch-general] Android support in Linux Arch
In my TU application I promised to look at situation with Android support in Arch. Android is an open-source project that has a number of sub-projects. The official website offers prebuild binaries for those sub-projects such as sdk, ndk, build-tools, IDE plugins,... We want to simplify Android installation and maintenance and looking into turning it into real packages. Installing tools by downloading and unpacking is sux and so 90s. The naive way to add packages is to use these binaries and just repack them into Arch packages. Or download-at-installation - something like what we do for proprietary software. AUR has many android packages that download binary files from Android website. But using prebuilt binary packages is something atypical for Arch. There are issues with it: - android download site provides only 32-bit binaries so multilib repositories are required - prebuild packages do not use standard installation paths - they compile against older version of third-party projects and bundled it into download files. The packages should depend on existing system libraries instead. The plan is to provide proper Arch packages that do not have the problems listed above. I initially tried to build a package that follows "build whole Android source-tree" official instructions [1]. And then pack only parts we need. Oh boy, this was painful. The source tree is several Gb of code, it pulls prebuilt versions of gcc, clang, python,.. It requires specific version of make and java. After a week of trying to build Android on Arch without using prebuilds I gave up. Actually those instructions [1] build system images that include kernel and ARM code for a specific hardware. Arch does not need it. I've decided to attack this problem from other side: find what exactly we need to pack as Arch packages and then build it from sources. I've decided to look to AUR non-binary android packages and see what people vote for (who said that voting is useless?). There are a number of packages that seems good for moving to [community]: - android-tools https://aur.archlinux.org/packages/android-tools/ It contains adb and fastboot. These the packages that I am interested in. I am not an Android developer I am just an Android user and adb is the most useful Android tool for me. - android completion for adb/fastboot https://aur.archlinux.org/packages/android-bash-completion/ these files can be merged into previous package. - android-udev https://aur.archlinux.org/packages/android-udev/ sounds useful as well These 3 packages is easy to move to [community] and my gut feeling says it should be enough for the most Android users. These is another category of users: those who *develop* for Android and need a lot of other tools, such as: sdk sdk-build-tools: aapt, aidl, dexdump, dx, llvm-rs-cc ndk api docs IDE plugins? system images? I did not find source packages for it at AUR. So if we want to add it [community] we need to create such packages but it might be quite hard. Are there people with Android development background? What exactly do you miss in Arch? Is it worth building our own SDK/eclipse plugins/...? [1] http://source.android.com/source/building-running.html
Hi, Am 17.04.2014 00:38, schrieb Anatol Pomozov:
Are there people with Android development background? What exactly do you miss in Arch?
The problem I face with the Android situation in Arch is that currently there seems to be no "clean" (TM) way to install the SDK and related stuff. The android-sdk package from AUR is fine and dandy, but one usually also needs to install a whole bunch of API specific packages through the "android" tool from the SDK. - This doesn't work for normal users, e.g. you can update the packages using Eclipse, but you need to start "/opt/android-sdk/tools/android" as root - Installing any sort of package through the "installer" mentioned above isn't compatible with the whole idea of package management, because the package manager isn't aware of these files. I ran into conflicts before, which I had to resolve by temporarily removing some components. Maybe I'm doing something wrong here, but at least this is what I've experienced throughout the last couple of months. Unfortunately I don't see a good way how this can be improved, as I like the idea of installing only API components that I really need and get instant (!) updates for them directly from the upstream project. Anyone familiar with the situation on other distributions? How do they handle all of this? Best regards, Karol Babioch
On 04/17/2014 06:50 AM, Karol Babioch wrote:
Hi,
Are there people with Android development background? What exactly do you miss in Arch? The problem I face with the Android situation in Arch is that currently
Am 17.04.2014 00:38, schrieb Anatol Pomozov: there seems to be no "clean" (TM) way to install the SDK and related stuff. The android-sdk package from AUR is fine and dandy, but one usually also needs to install a whole bunch of API specific packages through the "android" tool from the SDK.
- This doesn't work for normal users, e.g. you can update the packages using Eclipse, but you need to start "/opt/android-sdk/tools/android" as root
- Installing any sort of package through the "installer" mentioned above isn't compatible with the whole idea of package management, because the package manager isn't aware of these files. I ran into conflicts before, which I had to resolve by temporarily removing some components.
Maybe I'm doing something wrong here, but at least this is what I've experienced throughout the last couple of months. Unfortunately I don't see a good way how this can be improved, as I like the idea of installing only API components that I really need and get instant (!) updates for them directly from the upstream project.
Anyone familiar with the situation on other distributions? How do they handle all of this?
Best regards, Karol Babioch
You can just chown /opt/android-sdk and it will be easier to install api. Judging by the vote of android packages on AUR, most people seem to use the main android-sdk... packages and download apis from it, this shouldn' t be causing any conflict, I think. A cleaner way would be you just download the android-sdk from google and manage it yourself, anyway, itself is a package manager. I' m quite satisfied with the current status and don' t find support for android in [community] necessary, while if android licence allows this, moving some main android development packages to [community] doesn' t hurt, especially some huge package like android-ndk. I don' t know why you only consider non-binary packages.
Hi, Am 17.04.2014 04:22, schrieb GSC:
You can just chown /opt/android-sdk and it will be easier to install api.
Yeah, although I don't like the idea to "mess" around in /opt. Maybe it would be possible to introduce an "android" group, so it would be sufficient to add my user to this group?
especially some huge package like android-ndk. I don' t know why you only consider non-binary packages.
+1. android-ndk is a pain in the ass to compile, especially on older hardware, where it takes not only long but might run into memory restrictions, because it takes up so much RAM. Best regards, Karol Babioch
On 17/04/14 02:20 AM, Karol Babioch wrote:
Hi,
Am 17.04.2014 04:22, schrieb GSC:
You can just chown /opt/android-sdk and it will be easier to install api.
Yeah, although I don't like the idea to "mess" around in /opt. Maybe it would be possible to introduce an "android" group, so it would be sufficient to add my user to this group?
I think it's best to just install it to your home directory without involving the system package manager if you want to use the android package manager for anything. It's not sane to be giving users access to a directory in the PATH of other users, especially root. Many people have a single user system without a true non-administrator account, but packages need to be secure in cases where this isn't true.
Hi, Am 17.04.2014 08:53, schrieb Daniel Micay:
I think it's best to just install it to your home directory without involving the system package manager if you want to use the android package manager for anything.
So you are managing all of this alone and don't use the packages in AUR at all? At least android-udev seems useful? Where do you store your SDK? Have you added something to your PATH? I'm just looking for good practices here, so thanks for any replies!
It's not sane to be giving users access to a directory in the PATH of other users, especially root.
Yes, I feel very much the same way. Best regards, Karol Babioch
On 17/04/14 05:22 PM, Karol Babioch wrote:
Hi,
Am 17.04.2014 08:53, schrieb Daniel Micay:
I think it's best to just install it to your home directory without involving the system package manager if you want to use the android package manager for anything.
So you are managing all of this alone and don't use the packages in AUR at all? At least android-udev seems useful? Where do you store your SDK? Have you added something to your PATH? I'm just looking for good practices here, so thanks for any replies!
I use the AUR packages without touching the Android package manager at all. If I did plan on installing stuff from there, I would just install the SDK to my home directory and use a meta-package (no contents) to handle the external dependencies. You can add user-specific binary/library directories to PATH and the library search path (a fairly sane usage of LD_LIBRARY_PATH).
It's not sane to be giving users access to a directory in the PATH of other users, especially root.
Yes, I feel very much the same way.
Best regards, Karol Babioch
Hi, Am 17.04.2014 23:29, schrieb Daniel Micay:
I would just install the SDK to my home directory and use a meta-package (no contents) to handle the external dependencies.
Yes, that would probably make sense. Maybe such a package could be uploaded to the AUR. I've installed it to my home directory for now. The only dependency I needed to get it running was "swt". I'm not sure why the AUR packages lists all of the lib32 as dependency (for x86_64). I guess I'll find out soon enough. Best regards, Karol Babioch
Hello
On Thu, Apr 17, 2014 at 10:22 PM, Karol Babioch
Hi,
Am 17.04.2014 08:53, schrieb Daniel Micay:
I think it's best to just install it to your home directory without involving the system package manager if you want to use the android package manager for anything.
So you are managing all of this alone and don't use the packages in AUR at all? At least android-udev seems useful? Where do you store your SDK? Have you added something to your PATH? I'm just looking for good practices here, so thanks for any replies!
I've been coding for Android for some time now. I found the
android-udev and android-tools packages very useful but apart from
that I've downloaded and "installed" locally the Android SDK and IDE
(Android Studio is my preference). I manage android updates separately
without the use of a package manager (or aur). As you understand I had
to specify the paths on my profile. The Android SDK is installed under
home (along with multiple jdk versions)
[...]
On Wed, Apr 23, 2014 at 5:28 PM, Anatol Pomozov
Hi,
As there is no strong consensus on what to do with Android development tools then I am going to leave the situation as-is. Arch users will keep either installing the packages using Android installer or by AUR packages.
I am going to move packages android-tool and android-udev to [community]. These are small packages that many people find useful.
I agree with this approach.
Thanks,
Leonidas
--
Caution: breathing may be hazardous to your health.
#include
Hi, As there is no strong consensus on what to do with Android development tools then I am going to leave the situation as-is. Arch users will keep either installing the packages using Android installer or by AUR packages. I am going to move packages android-tool and android-udev to [community]. These are small packages that many people find useful.
Hello,
Yeah, android-udev would be useful in [community]. And what do you think
about moving android-sdk too?
I personally also find more useful to get updates about Android tools from
it rather than using any package managers or aur pkgbuilds.
/opt could still be its install location.
All the best,
Sent from my Android
On Apr 23, 2014 1:28 PM, "Anatol Pomozov"
Hi,
As there is no strong consensus on what to do with Android development tools then I am going to leave the situation as-is. Arch users will keep either installing the packages using Android installer or by AUR packages.
I am going to move packages android-tool and android-udev to [community]. These are small packages that many people find useful.
participants (6)
-
Anatol Pomozov
-
Daniel Micay
-
GSC
-
Karol Babioch
-
Leonidas Spyropoulos
-
Thiago Barroso Perrotta