Building applications for Android

Learn how to build your applications for Android

Building .apk files from Qt Applications requires a cross-compiling toolchain, which is hard to setup. To simplify this, there is a ready-to-use Docker container for building KDE applications.

This only applies to applications that have a Craft blueprint in the craft-blueprints-kde repository. If the application you want does not have such a blueprint yet, have a look at the documentation.

Setting up the image

First create a mountable folder used for the image:

mkdir craft-kde-android

If you want to build Qt6 applications, download the qt67 image:

docker run -ti --rm -v $PWD/craft-kde-android:/home/user/CraftRoot invent-registry.kde.org/sysadmin/ci-images/android-qt67 bash

If the application is using Qt5, use the qt515 image:

docker run -ti --rm -v $PWD/craft-kde-android:/home/user/CraftRoot invent-registry.kde.org/sysadmin/ci-images/android-qt515 bash

Note If this fails with an error similar to "Permission denied", you may need to disable SELinux while using craft by running `sudo setenforce 0`

After the image is done downloading, you should be in a new shell which is running inside of the container. Now it's time to initialize Craft:

python3 -c "$(curl https://raw.githubusercontent.com/KDE/craft/master/setup/CraftBootstrap.py)" --prefix ~/CraftRoot

It will ask several questions such as which Qt version to use, and the target architecture. Once that's complete, enter the Craft environment:

source ~/CraftRoot/craft/craftenv.sh

Your shell prompt should now look something like this:

CRAFT: user@830068cd8dca:~/CraftRoot$ 

Building applications

To build an application and it's dependencies, simply run the craft command with the application as the sole argument. For example, to build KDE Itinerary:

craft itinerary

You can search for blueprints using the --search command:

CRAFT: user@830068cd8dca:~/CraftRoot$ craft --search kongress
Craft               : /home/user/CraftRoot
Version             : master
ABI                 : android-clang-arm64
Download directory  : /home/user/CraftRoot/download
Cache repository    : https://files.kde.org/craft/Qt6/23.11/android/clang/arm64
Package kongress found:
kde/applications/kongress
    Name: Kongress
    BlueprintPath: /home/user/CraftRoot/etc/blueprints/locations/craft-blueprints-kde/kde/applications/kongress/kongress.py
    Homepage: https://www.kde.org/
    Description: Conference companion app
    Tags: 
    Options: args=, branch=(str), buildStatic=(bool), buildTests=True, buildType=MinSizeRel, featureArguments=, ignored=(bool), patchLevel=(int), revision=(str), srcDir=(str), version=(str)
    Latest version: 23.08.3
    Installed versions: None
    Installed revision: None

    Available versions: master, kf6, release/23.04, release/23.08, 23.04.3, 23.08.0, 23.08.1, 23.08.2, 23.08.3, 24.01.75

When compilation is finished, the APK packaging step is not run automatically. Invoke it manually using --package:

craft --package itinerary

Signing APKs

The .apk file can be found at /home/user/CraftRoot/tmp. This folder is also available as craft-kde-android/tmp on the host system. Craft does not sign the apks, so you need to do that yourself before being able to install it onto a device. For signing an apk, you need to create a signing key first, which can be done using

keytool -genkey -noprompt -keystore key.keystore -keypass 123456  -dname "CN=None, OU=None, O=None, L=None, S=None, C=XY" -alias mykey -keyalg RSA -keysize 2048 -validity 10000 -storepass 123456

This key can be reused to sign all of your development apks.

Before signing the apk, it might be needed to align it. This can be done using

zipalign -p -f -v 4 <app>.apk <app>.signed.apk

You can finally sign the aligned apk with your key using

apksigner sign -verbose -ks key.keystore <app>.signed.apk

The zipalign and apksigner binaries can be found at /opt/android-sdk/build-tools/<version>/ inside the Craft container environment.

Iterating on blueprints

Inside the Craft environment, the blueprints can be found by running cs craft-blueprints-kde and can be edited there to quickly test changes.

The source folder for an application or library can be found the same way by running cs <projectname>; the build folder can be found by running cb <projectname>.

You can quickly iterate on patches for a project by editing it in the source folder, followed by calling ninja install in the build folder and creating an apk file using craft --package <appname>.

There are much more Craft commands, take a look at the Craft documentation to learn about them.