[Replicant] Could we build the Android frameworks fo Linux?

[Denis 'GNUtoo' Carikli]

On Mon, 9 Mar 2020 02:26:54 -0500
Joel Valenciano <joelv1907 at gmail.com> wrote:

> Does anyone know of a way to compile them to run like that?

If you question is about using the Android framework with the upstream
Linux kernels interfaces, that is possible, and Replicant 9 should
normally have that.

If instead you're looking to run the Android framework on top of
GNU/Linux we are really interesting in that too: we have a number
of serious issues we would like to fix in Android that would
require using a build system that has a concept of packages.

Even if the task of packaging Replicant in some distribution like
Parabola or GuiX is not done because of the amount of work required,
even a more partial approach has some benefits.

For instance Android ships a toolchain and some tools required to
compile it that are free software but in binary form. Packaging such
tools would be a good idea.

GNU/Linux distributions have the same issue as they also need to
package utilities like adb which are built against bionic (the Android
libc) and that depends on the Android build system.

We keep track of that in our wiki here:
https://redmine.replicant.us/projects/replicant/wiki/Upstream#Tools-and-build-systems

And while some distributions like Debian got to the point where they
manage to package the full Android SDK in some older Debian version, I'm
unsure if that allows to run the Android framework or what would be
left to enable that.

We were also told by Michiel from NLnet that NixOS was working
on something in that regard too, but we didn't look yet in the details.

Apart from that there are other approaches like running Android in an
lxc system container:
https://www.collabora.com/news-and-blog/blog/2019/04/01/running-android-next-to-wayland/

I also heard of other attempts to enable to run Android applications on
GNU/Linux, many of which were not free software. Though I'd have to
do more research on the free software attempts, and while it's very
interesting, it's also less relevant to what we want to do
in Replicant.

If my memory is good puri.sm may also have managed to port at least one
Android applications to GNU/Linux but I'd have to do more research on
that to be sure that it's really the case, and to look at the technical
details.

Denis.
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