Android

From NixOS Wiki
Revision as of 13:20, 8 March 2020 by imported>Raboof (→‎adb shell on device)

adb setup

To enable adb in NixOS for unprivileged users add these lines to your configuration.nix. This is mandatory for all further interactions with your android device.

{
  programs.adb.enable = true;
  users.users.<your-user>.extraGroups = ["adbusers"];
}

This will add additional udev rules for unprivileged access as well as add adb to your $PATH.

Alternatively, if you don't want to install adb globally but do want to configure the udev rules, you can:

{
  services.udev.packages = [
    pkgs.android-udev-rules
  ];
}


Interaction with your Android device

adb shell on device

First open a nix-shell with the platform tools and connect your device:

$ # For nixos < 19.03
$ # nix-shell -p androidenv.platformTools
$ nix-shell -p androidenv.androidPkgs_9_0.platform-tools
% adb devices
List of devices attached
* daemon not running; starting now at tcp:5037
* daemon started successfully
BH90272JCU	unauthorized

A popup appears on your phone to allow your computer access to it. After allowing, you can:

% adb devices
List of devices attached
BH90272JCU	device
% adb shell

You can also connect to an already-running adb server:

$ # For nixos < 19.03
$ # nix-shell -p androidenv.platformTools
$ nix-shell -p androidenv.androidPkgs_9_0.platform-tools
% adb connect 192.168.1.10
% adb shell

Transferring files from/to an Android device

There are two main methods for newer devices:

Android Development

Android Studio

To develop apps using Android Studio

$ nix-shell -p android-studio --run android-studio

Building Android on NixOS

It's possible to use nix-shell with buildFHSUserEnv to set up an environment in which it's viable to build Android without huge amounts of editing. This is an example shell.nix file.

{ pkgs ? import <nixpkgs> {} }:
 
let fhs = pkgs.buildFHSUserEnv {
  name = "android-env";
  targetPkgs = pkgs: with pkgs;
    [ git
      gitRepo
      gnupg
      python2
      curl
      procps
      openssl
      gnumake
      nettools
      androidenv.platformTools
      jdk
      schedtool
      utillinux
      m4
      gperf
      perl
      libxml2
      zip
      unzip
      bison
      flex
      lzop
    ];
  multiPkgs = pkgs: with pkgs;
    [ zlib
    ];
  runScript = "bash";
  profile = ''
    export USE_CCACHE=1
    export ANDROID_JAVA_HOME=${pkgs.jdk.home}
  '';
};
in pkgs.stdenv.mkDerivation {
  name = "android-env-shell";
  nativeBuildInputs = [ fhs ];
  shellHook = "exec android-env";

}
  1. more information on that snippet
  2. A shell.nix to build LineageOS
  3. NixDroid, building aosp roms (e.g. LineageOS) with nix. ( not very well documented and requires patches to nix )
  4. LineageOS build setup using terranix and hcloud, based on the shell.nix to build LineageOS. Useful if you are in a rush and don't have to much CPU power on your hand.

Using the nixpkgs androidenv

User Sander van der Burg created two awesome blog posts as well as a number of test cases usable as examples on how to use the nixpkgs androidenv and the emulator provideded:

  1. Building Android applications with the Nix package manager
  2. Reproducing Android app deployments (or playing Angry Birds on NixOS)
  3. A set of androidenv test cases