Re: Building an Android app using only Android SDK and development tools already available in Debian

[Alex King <alex@king.net.nz>]

Please do update the wiki so that when I (and others) come to do the 
same (which I'm planning to do soon) we can benefit from your learning.

Thanks,
Alex

On 21/05/25 04:46, Csányi Pál wrote:
> <tomas@tuxteam.de> ezt írta (időpont: 2025. máj. 20., K, 14:35):
> > On Tue, May 20, 2025 at 02:01:34PM +0200, Csányi Pál wrote:
> > > Csányi Pál <csanyipal@gmail.com> ezt írta (időpont: 2025. máj. 20., K, 11:13):
> > > > Hi,
> > > >
> > > > on the Debian 12 Bookworm operating system I want to make android apps.
> > > >
> > > > I would follow the advice on these websites:
> > > > https://wiki.debian.org/AndroidTools
> > > > and
> > > > https://wiki.debian.org/AndroidTools/IntroBuildingApps
> > > >
> > > > Following the latter web page, the following command cannot be
> > > > executed on Debian 12:
> > > > apt install android-sdk-platform-23
> > > >
> > > > because no such package is in the repository!
> > > >
> > > > So, what can I do to achieve my goal?> How can I solve this problem
> > > So, following the
> > > https://wiki.debian.org/AndroidTools/IntroBuildingApps page, I skipped
> > > the installation of the android-sdk-platform-23 package, because it is
> > > not in the package repository.
> > >
> > > But I ran the following commands:
> > >
> > > $ mkdir ~/Git
> > > $ cd ~/Git
> > > $ git clone https://gitlab.com/Matrixcoffee/hello-world-debian-android.git
> > > $ cd hello-world-debian-android
> > > $ make
> > You are obviously missing one or more packages. In this thread,
> > there were some hints on how to find out which.
> >
> > > and when I ran make I got the following error message:
> > >
> > > aapt package -f -m -J src -S res -M AndroidManifest.xml -I
> > > /usr/lib/android-sdk/platforms/android-23/android.jar
> > > asset W 05-20 10:57:00 68768 68768 Asset path
> > > /usr/lib/android-sdk/platforms/android-23/android.jar is neither a
> > > directory nor file (type=1).
> > > ERROR: Asset package include
> > > '/usr/lib/android-sdk/platforms/android-23/android.jar' not found.
> > > make: *** [Makefile:31: src/coffee/source/helloworld/R.java] Error 1
> > I'd try installing one or more of the packages you see when doing
> > "apt search android-platform". That said, apt-file-search doesn't
> > find a file named "android.jar", so there might be something else
> > amiss.
> >
> > My hunch is that the "-23" in your package name hints at a version
> > number which might be obsolete. But I don't know.
> Thank you very much, there is now a little progress here!
>
> I found several packages in the debian package repository:
>
> ...
> google-android-platform-21-installer/stable 21+r2.1675172738 all
> google-android-platform-22-installer/stable 22+r2.1675172738 all
> google-android-platform-23-installer/stable 23+r3.1675172738 all
> google-android-platform-24-installer/stable 24+r2.1675172738 all
> ...
>
> and of course I installed the
> google-android-platform-23-installer/stable 23+r3.1675172738 all
> debian package .
>
> Now the make command above will find the android.jar file,
> but I get another error message:
> make: /usr/lib/android-sdk/build-tools/debian/dx: No such file or directory .
> So I must install google-android-build-tools-23.0.3-installer debian
> package too.
>
> To run make successfully, I just had to change the apksigner command
> to the signapk command, since the apksigner package is no longer in
> the debian package repository.
> What remains is to edit the Makefile so that the signapk can do its job.
> Then I hope I can successfully create this apk file.
>
> Thank you all very much for your help!
>
> The only reason I wouldn't use Android Studio is because my hardware
> doesn't have enough RAM: I need at least 32GB, and I only have 6GB.