lbry-android/BUILD.md

Linux Build Instructions

This app has currently only been built on Ubuntu 14.04, 16.04, 17.10, and 18.04, but these instructions, or an analog of them, should work on most Linux or macOS environments.

Install Prerequisites

Requirements

• JDK 1.8
• Android SDK
• Crystax Android NDK
• Buildozer
• Node.js
• npm

apt Packages

Based on the quickstart instructions at http://buildozer.readthedocs.io/en/latest/installation.html

sudo dpkg --add-architecture i386
sudo apt-get update
sudo apt-get install autoconf autogen build-essential libtool python python-pip python-openssl ccache git libncurses5:i386 libstdc++6:i386 libgtk2.0-0:i386 libpangox-1.0-0:i386 libpangoxft-1.0-0:i386 libidn11:i386 python2.7 python2.7-dev openjdk-8-jdk unzip zlib1g-dev zlib1g:i386 m4 libc6-dev-i386

Alternatively, the JDK available from http://www.oracle.com/technetwork/java/javase/downloads/index.html can be installed instead of the openjdk-8-jdk package.

Install Cython

sudo pip install --upgrade cython==0.25.2 setuptools

Install buildozer

A forked version of buildozer needs to be installed in order to copy the React Native UI source files into the corresponding directories.

git clone https://github.com/lbryio/buildozer.git
cd buildozer
sudo python2.7 setup.py install

Create buildozer.spec

Assuming lbry-android as the current working folder:

• Copy buildozer.spec.sample to buildozer.spec in the lbry-android folder. Running buildozer init instead will create a new buildozer.spec file.
• Update buildozer.spec settings to match your environment. The basic recommended settings are outlined below.

Setting	Description
title	application title
package.name	package name (eg. browser)
package.domain	package domain (eg. io.lbry)
source.dir	the location of the application main.py
version	application version
requirements	the Python module requirements for building the application
services	list of Android background services and their corresponding Python entry points
android.permissions	Android manifest permissions required by the application. This should be set to INTERNET at the very least to enable internet connectivity
android.api	Android API version (Should be at least 23 for Gradle build support)
android.sdk	Android SDK version (Should be at least 23 for Gradle build support)
android.ndk	Android NDK version (not required when using crystax Android NDK)
android.ndk_path	Android NDK path. This should be set to the crystax Android NDK path)
android.sdk_path	Android SDK path. This should be set to the path where the Android SDK is manually set up (if not set up in the .buildozer path).
p4a.source_dir	Path to the python-for-android repository folder. Currently set to the included p4a folder
p4a.local_recipes	Path to a folder containing python_for_android recipes to be used in the build. The included recipes folder includes recipes for a successful build

Setup Android SDK for buildozer

Download the Android SDK, platform and build tools archives.

• Android API 23 SDK - https://dl.google.com/android/android-sdk_r23-linux.tgz
• Android API 27 platform - https://dl.google.com/android/repository/platform-27_r01.zip
• Android build tools 26.0.1 - https://dl.google.com/android/repository/build-tools_r26.0.1-linux.

Create the .buildozer path (and the android sub-path) in your home folder if it doesn't already exist. mkdir ~/.buildozer mkdir ~/.buildozer/android

Extract the API 23 SDK to the ~/.buildozer/android path and rename the extracted folder.

tar -xf android-sdk_r23-linux.tgz ~/.buildozer/android/platform/
mv ~/.buildozer/android/platform/android-sdk-linux ~/.buildozer/android/platform/android-sdk-23

Extract the API 27 platform archive into the android-sdk-23 folder and rename the extracted folder.

unzip platform-27_r01.zip -d ~/.buildozer/android/platform/android-sdk-23/platforms
mv ~/.buildozer/android/platform/android-sdk-23/platforms/android-8.1.0 ~/.buildozer/android/platform/android-sdk-23/platforms/android-27

Extract the the build tools 26.0.1 build tools into the android-sdk-23 folder and rename the extracted folder.

mkdir -p ~/.buildozer/android/platform/android-sdk-23/build-tools
unzip ~/.buildozer/android/platform/build-tools_r26.0.1-linux.zip -d ~/.buildozer/android/platform/android-sdk-23/build-tools
mv ~/.buildozer/android/platform/android-sdk-23/build-tools/android-8.0.0 ~/.buildozer/android/platform/android-sdk-23/build-tools/26.0.1

Finally, create the Android SDK license file. This prevents being prompted to accept the SDK license during the build process.

mkdir -p ~/.buildozer/android/platform/android-sdk-23/licenses
echo $'\nd56f5187479451eabf01fb78af6dfcb131a6481e' > ~/.buildozer/android/platform/android-sdk-23/licenses/android-sdk-license

Setup Crystax Android NDK for buildozer

Download the Crystax Android NDK from https://us.crystax.net/download/crystax-ndk-10.3.2-linux-x86_64.tar.xz and extract. Remember to update android.ndk_path in your buildozer.spec to the path of the extracted Crystax NDK archive.

Build and Deploy

Run npm i in the lbry-android/app folder to install the necessary modules required by the React Native user interface.

Run ./build.sh in lbry-android to build the APK. The output can be found in the bin subdirectory.

To build and deploy, you can run ./deploy.sh. This requires a connected device or running Android emulator.

Development

If you already installed Android SDK and adb

• Run adb reverse tcp:8081 tcp:8081
• Then go to the lbry-android/app folder and run npm start

Note: You need to have your device connected with USB debugging.

Once the bundler is ready, run the LBRY Browser app on your device and then shake the device violently until you see the React Native dev menu. You can enable "Live Reloading" and "Hot Reloading" from this menu, so any changes you make to the React Native code will be visible as you save. This will only reload React Native Javascript files. Native Java code needs to be redeployed by running the command ./deploy.sh