[Android-tools-devel] New Android SDK/NDK Rebuilds

Mon Nov 26 09:29:59 GMT 2018

Hey Sylvain,

Thanks for your work!  I'm part of the Debian Android Tools Team
(CC'ed), I also added seamlik in CC.  We are still working on things.
seamlik almost has v8.1.0 of the core parts of the SDK in Debian.  We
could definitely use help, its a big project.

One thing that I think would be good to think about is how to most
efficiently use our time.  One way would be to standardize on your
rebuilds for all of the things that it doesn't make sense to include in
a distro (e.g. "platforms", NDK, support libs, etc).  And then
standardize on the Debian packages as the core provider of free SDK
tools ("tools", "platform-tools", etc).  The Debian packaging is
actually mostly custom Makefiles, so it could be easily adopted by other
distros.  We use absolutely no prebuilts, so we've achieved that
already.  That was indeed quite a large part of the work (lombok,
gradle, kotlin, etc).

The biggest blocker right now is finishing the Kotlin packaging.  That
would be a great place for contributors to join in.

Perhaps a better place to check the status of the Debian Android Tools
Team packages is here, where you can see most are updated to
https://qa.debian.org/developer.php?email=android-tools-devel%40lists.alioth.debian.org

Also, FYI, almost all the Debian packages can be reproducibly built:
https://salsa.debian.org/android-tools-team/admin/wikis/home

.hc

beuc at beuc.net:
> Oh, if you questionned my worry about Debian & Replicant, I'm mostly
> worried I'm the only person on earth doing free builds of the SDK/NDK.
> Which is not a sustainable situation ;)
> 
> - Sylvain
> 
> On Fri, Nov 23, 2018 at 11:22:01PM +0100, beuc at beuc.net wrote:
>> Hi!
>>
>> Basically I don't want to accept this agreement
>> https://developer.android.com/studio/terms
>> but I have to if I want to download any Android tool binary.
>>
>> See also:
>> https://blogs.fsfe.org/torsten.grote/2013/01/03/android-sdk-is-now-proprietary-replicant-to-the-rescue/
>> https://code.paulk.fr/article0008/what-s-up-with-the-android-sdk
>>
>>
>> Moreover I got reports of such downloads being blocked in e.g. Iran.
>> https://medium.com/@AliBehzadian/pain-of-being-android-developer-in-iran-390fb3190cb3
>>
>>
>> Rebuilding everything including the "prebuilts" binaries would be the
>> next step (and great!).  Help is needed and appreciated :)
>>
>>
>> - Sylvain
>>
>>
>> On Fri, Nov 23, 2018 at 10:09:00PM +0000, Joonas Kylmälä wrote:
>>> Hi,
>>>
>>> is the SDK code free if you build it from AOSP source code?
>>>
>>> The license list at
>>>
>>> https://android.googlesource.com/platform/development/+/master/sdk/
>>>
>>> is overwhelming me but at least
>>>
>>> https://android.googlesource.com/platform/sdk/
>>>
>>> looks to be simply Apache License 2.0 licensed.
>>>
>>> What are your worries about the current situation? Is it that it
>>> wouldn't be available on a free operating system because it is hard to
>>> package it to small packages because all the different parts of source
>>> code depend on each other? Something else?
>>>
>>> On a side note: what I don't like about the AOSP SDK code is that some
>>> of the things are already in binary form in the source code (though,
>>> they are free) and if you want to trust actually the binary you are
>>> getting you need to re-build also the binary blobs in the source code
>>> yourself from their respective source code.
>>>
>>> Joonas
>>>
>>> beuc at beuc.net:
>>>> Hi,
>>>>
>>>> The Android SDK license agreement changed but it remains non-free.
>>>>
>>>> I recompiled SDK 9.0.0, NDK r18b and SDK Tools 26.1.1
>>>> (without this non-free EULA):
>>>>
>>>>   https://android-rebuilds.beuc.net/
>>>>   https://gitlab.com/android-rebuilds/auto
>>>>
>>>> NDK is significantly easier to recompile now; new tools are present
>>>> such as the Android Gradle Plugin (though I didn't manage to produce a
>>>> useable repository for it); Android Studio claims it comes with
>>>> non-free components such as CLion so I don't redistribute it.
>>>>
>>>> Feedback welcome!
>>>>
>>>>
>>>> I'm a bit worried about the current situation by the way:
>>>>
>>>> - AFAICS Replicant delegated all SDK work to Debian Android Tools
>>>>   https://blog.replicant.us/2017/04/there-wont-be-a-replicant-6-0-sdk-because-there-is-already-something-better/
>>>>
>>>> - Debian Android Tools provided initial SDK 6 support
>>>>   https://wiki.debian.org/AndroidTools
>>>>
>>>> - Debian Android Tools didn't update the SDK, and plus SDK 6 doesn't
>>>>   compile with newer tools and was removed from the upcoming release:
>>>>   https://packages.debian.org/search?keywords=android-sdk-platform
>>>>
>>>>
>>>> Are there other efforts for free SDK/NDK/Studio ?
>>>>
>>>> Cheers!
>>>> Sylvain
>>>> _______________________________________________
>>>> Android mailing list
>>>> Android at lists.fsfe.org
>>>> https://lists.fsfe.org/mailman/listinfo/android
>>>>
>>>> This mailing list is covered by the FSFE's Code of Conduct. All
>>>> participants are kindly asked to be excellent to each other:
>>>> https://fsfe.org/about/codeofconduct
>>>>
>>>
>>
>>
>>
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>>
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>> https://fsfe.org/about/codeofconduct
> _______________________________________________
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> Android at lists.fsfe.org
> https://lists.fsfe.org/mailman/listinfo/android
> 
> This mailing list is covered by the FSFE's Code of Conduct. All
> participants are kindly asked to be excellent to each other:
> https://fsfe.org/about/codeofconduct
> 

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