Android Studio

Native Environments

All credit for this excellent approach goes to Julien Lepiller. I have really just adapted it for this wiki.

Here we’ll use guix environment to containerize Android Studio in order to work-around the countless of hard-coded paths that aren’t available on PantherX. It’s up to Google / JetBrains to fix this.

Prepare

Download Android Studio from here.

Store all this stuff wherever you want. I’m using ~/git/. The final structure I’m looking at, will be something like this:

Android Studio at ~/git/android/android-studio
Android preferences at ~/git/android/home
Android SDK (for ease) at ~/Android (this is what the IDE defaults to)

Here we go:

$ cd ~/git
$ mkdir android
$ tar -xvzf android-studio-ide-201.6953283-linux.tar.gz -C android
~/git/android/android-studio

I have a bad habit of putting all development stuff under ~/git. You may put it wherever you want (for ex. ~/dev), just don’t complain.

Configure the environment

Create a manifest for the environment:

nano ~/git/android/studio-manifest.scm

with the following content:

(use-package-modules base bash compression gcc gl glib linux nss pulseaudio
                     version-control virtualization xml xorg)

(packages->manifest
  (list bash git which dbus
        (list gcc "lib")

        ;; for running the android virtual devices (AVD):
        e2fsprogs qemu-minimal
        alsa-lib expat libxcomposite libxcursor libxi libxtst
        mesa nss pulseaudio (list util-linux "lib") libx11 zlib))

Fix included Java

Indeed the included Java at ~/git/android/android-studio/jre gives us problems, so we’ll replace that with our own:

$ guix build icedtea
/gnu/store/mag0najz2fdiqv6qslkc4b2fm0kj2lxr-icedtea-3.7.0-doc
/gnu/store/h6w6w37dskgdikxy3mywkldicqyfd0zj-icedtea-3.7.0-jdk
/gnu/store/amk6smc2ciaj5w3azsr1qz025c10w7kx-icedtea-3.7.0
$ sudo ln -sv /gnu/store/h6w6w37dskgdikxy3mywkldicqyfd0zj-icedtea-3.7.0-jdk /var/guix/gcroots
$ rm -rf ~/git/android/android-studio/jre
$ ln -sv /var/guix/gcroot/h6w6w37dskgdikxy3mywkldicqyfd0zj-icedtea-3.7.0-jdk /home/franz/git/android/android-studio/jre

The store paths /gnu/store/h6w6w37dsk... will vary so watch out!

Create simlinks

To keep all Android related stuff in one place, we do:

mkdir -p ~/git/android/home/android
ln -sv ~/git/android/home ~/.android
ln -sv ~/git/android/home/AndroidStudio4.0 ~/.AndroidStudio4.0

Create the environment

Assuming you’re at ~/git/android

export PROFILE=$(guix environment -C -N -m studio-manifest.scm \
  -- bash -c 'echo $GUIX_ENVIRONMENT')

and then, build and enter the container with:

guix environment -C -N --share=$XAUTHORITY --share=/tmp/.X11-unix \
    --share=/dev/shm --expose=/etc/machine-id --expose=$HOME \
    --expose=$PROFILE/lib=/lib --expose=$PROFILE/lib=/lib64 --share=/dev/kvm \
    -m studio-manifest.scm -- env XAUTHORITY=$XAUTHORITY DISPLAY=$DISPLAY bash

Run

LD_LIBRARY_PATH=/lib ./android-studio/bin/studio.sh

To run Android Virtual Device (AVD) from Studio:

LD_LIBRARY_PATH=/lib:/lib/nss:$HOME/Android/Sdk/emulator/lib64/qt/lib:$HOME/Android/Sdk/emulator/lib64
    ./android-studio/bin/studio.sh

This is assuming you installed the SDK at $HOME (/home/USERNAME). You will have to run Android Studio once, to download the relevant SDK’s before running the last command..

Re-run

To run this again, at a later point, go back to ~/git/android and repeat the last two steps:

Create the environment
Run

Known Issues

There’s an issue with built-in adb.
I haven’t actually tried the device emulator (AVD)