Develop Reference

Kivy application does not work on Android

I want write simple application in Python for Android using kivy. Sadly when I start example code I see only splash screen and few second later application finish work. There is a huge problem with debugging because adb on Linux Mint does not detect my device.
Can someone look at my code and tell my why?
To build application I use buildozer. You can also see create_env script to check all dependencies are there.
Best regards.
Draqun
EDIT:
I started debugging my application. Conclusion:
buildozer + python3 + kivy is a bad idea
if I use kivy.uix.button.Button when text attribute is str than I got exception "AttributeError: 'str' object has no attribute 'decode'"
if I use kivy.uix.button.Button when text attribute is bytes than I got exception "ValueError: Button.text accept only str"
It looks like loop with no solution. Some idea when I should report it?
Exception is in .buildozer/android/platform/build/build/python-installs/pad/android/init.py" file so it does not look like kivy and/or buildozer exception.

I've used python-for android tool and faced with the same errors. But in my case, app didn't run at all - crashed from splash screen. Finally, I've found a solution. You can try the same way.
So my pipeline was python3 + python-for-android (p4a tool, python-for-android, from master branch) + kivy (1.10.1)
There is a file "_android.pyx" for android building recipe (full list of avaliable p4a recipes you can see by command p4a recipes). This file is, possibly, used by Buildozer, and exactly used by P4A during APK building procedure. You need to fix it.
You may find it's location in Ubuntu (for example) via:
sudo updatedb
locate _android.pyx
It's path should be something like:
~/.local/lib/python3.6/site-packages/pythonforandroid/recipes/android/src/android/_android.pyx
There should be a string:
python_act = autoclass(JAVA_NAMESPACE.decode('utf-8') + u'.PythonActivity')
so you should change it - something like this:
python_act = autoclass(str(JAVA_NAMESPACE) + u'.PythonActivity'),
or just use some hardcode:
python_act = autoclass("org/kivy/android/PythonActivity")
Or there might be the other decode() usage in sources.
The reason: differences between Python2 and Python3 - the decode() method is usable on the equivalent binary data type in either Python 2 or 3, but it can’t be used by the textual data type consistently between Python 2 and 3 because str in Python 3 doesn’t have the method decode function has different realisation in Python3. More details are here:
pyporting features
issues p4a's github
Hope, it will help you somehow.

Missing Kernel DTB after creating signed Android images

I'm porting android to a display device, and have nearly completed this. The device use the Freescale/NXP i.MX6 Dual Lite Soc. The Android version used is Android 8.0.0, and the build is based on the Board Support Packages from NXP/Freescale (link below).
https://www.nxp.com/support/developer-resources/software-development-tools/i.mx-developer-resources/android-os-for-i.mx-applications-processors:IMXANDROID?tab=Design_Tools_Tab
The OS builds fine, and the images (u-boot, boot.img, system.img, vendor.img) resuling from the "make" process works perfercly fine on the device. So my last step is basically to sign the images, and this is where I struggle to get stuff working.
I am following the the guide found here:
https://source.android.com/devices/tech/ota/sign_builds
After completing the steps, I use the now signed images found in the "signed-img.zip" file to flash the device (using the NXP Manufacturing Tool, and not Fast Boot). However, the device now fails to boot the Kernel, giving me an error that the DTB is missing.
Hit any key to stop autoboot: 0
boota mmc0
kernel # 14008000 (8183104)
ramdisk # 15000000 (2036048)
## Booting Android Image at 0x12000000 ...
Kernel load addr 0x14008000 size 7992 KiB
Kernel command line: console=ttymxc0,115200 init=/init video=mxcfb0:dev=ldb video=mxcfb1:off video=mxcfb2:off video=mxcfb3:off vmalloc=128M androidboot.console=ttymxc0 consoleblank=0 ldo_active=on androidboot.hardware=sedevices cma=448M android.selinux=permissive android.dm_verify=disable androidboot.selinux=enforce androidboot.dm_verity=disable androidboot.storage_type=emmc loglevel=8 vt.global_cursor_default=0 buildvariant=userdebug androidboot.serialno=0b2861d4df668b47 androidboot.soc_type=imx6dl androidboot.storage_type=emmc
ERROR: Did not find a cmdline Flattened Device Tree
Could not find a valid device tree
resetting ...
I've narrowed the problem down to the very first step in the guide, where "make dist" is executed in the build directory. This produces a number of ZIP files in the "out/dist" folder, which is processed further in the following steps in the guide. I've tried flashing the device with the images produced in this step (found in the resulting "out/dist/*-img-*.zip" file), and this produces the exact same issue.
So my question is, what does really "make dist" do which cause the DTB to be missing in the "boot.img"? I would've expected it to use the already working "boot.img" found in "out/target/product//". But it instead seems to re-build this image, and in this case not include the DTB. As with so many other aspects of building Android from Source, the workings of "make dist" does not seem to be explained anywhere in the documentation.
I hope anyone with some experience in building Android from source knows something about this, because I seem to be royally stuck.
Just FYI; when I flash the "boot.img" produced after a normal "make", the output after U-boot is as follows:
Hit any key to stop autoboot: 0
boota mmc0
Error: blob decap job completed with errors 0x2000081A
In boota get fastboot lock status error. Set lock status
kernel # 14008000 (8183104)
ramdisk # 15000000 (2036754)
fdt # 14f00000 (40998)
## Booting Android Image at 0x12000000 ...
Kernel load addr 0x14008000 size 7992 KiB
Kernel command line: console=ttymxc0,115200 init=/init video=mxcfb0:dev=ldb video=mxcfb1:off video=mxcfb2:off video=mxcfb3:off vmalloc=128M androidboot.console=ttymxc0 consoleblank=0 ldo_active=on androidboot.hardware=sedevices cma=448M android.selinux=permissive android.dm_verify=disable androidboot.selinux=enforce androidboot.dm_verity=disable androidboot.storage_type=emmc loglevel=8 vt.global_cursor_default=0 buildvariant=userdebug androidboot.serialno=0b2861d4df668b47 androidboot.soc_type=imx6dl androidboot.storage_type=emmc
## Flattened Device Tree blob at 14f00000
Booting using the fdt blob at 0x14f00000
Loading Kernel Image ... OK
Using Device Tree in place at 14f00000, end 14f0d025
switch to ldo_bypass mode!
Starting kernel ...

It seem NXP/Freescale have modified the Build Scripts in their AOSP Board Support Package, and broken the DTB inclusion in the process. It may seem like they where happy when the output from the standard "make" process worked on their Dev Board, and never bothered checking if it was possible to create working signed Release images with it.
The mechanism to include a DTB in the dist package was in place (specifying the location of the DTB in BOARD_KERNEL_DTS), and was also used for their "make otapackage" target. However, that target only generates an unsigned (or signed with dev keys) OTA package, which can not be used with the signing scripts.
In order to make it work as it should, I had to make a small change in the main Makefile which specifies the location of the DTB defined in the BoardConfig.mk. The change was simple enough to make, but the hard part was figuring out where the problem was and how it was intended to work in the first place.
The following patch in "build/make/" fixes the issue, as long as a BoardConfig.mk ONLY specifies one DTB (which at least suits my needs):
diff --git a/core/Makefile b/core/Makefile
index a650565a1..92f3025a9 100644
--- a/core/Makefile
+++ b/core/Makefile
## -621,6 +621,19 ## ifdef INTERNAL_KERNEL_CMDLINE
INTERNAL_BOOTIMAGE_ARGS += --cmdline "$(INTERNAL_KERNEL_CMDLINE)"
endif
+# NOTE! This script has a defect which cause the kernel DTB to be left out when ever 'make dist'
+# is executed. The following addition "fixes" this by adding the first dtb specified in the
+# BoardConfig.mk file. (I would guess in most cases there is never more than one!)
+ifdef dist_goal
+ifndef BOARD_KERNEL_DTS
+ifdef TARGET_BOARD_DTS_CONFIG
+DTS_BOARD=$(word 2, $(subst :, ,$(word 1, $(TARGET_BOARD_DTS_CONFIG))))
+BOARD_KERNEL_DTS="$(KERNEL_OUT)/$(DTS_BOARD)"
+$(info FIXUP: Defining BOARD_KERNEL_DTS:=[$(BOARD_KERNEL_DTS)] for BOOT packaging)
+endif
+endif
+endif
+
INTERNAL_MKBOOTIMG_VERSION_ARGS := \
--os_version $(PLATFORM_VERSION) \
--os_patch_level $(PLATFORM_SECURITY_PATCH)

pyqtdeploy: add external modules

is there someone who has experience with pyqtdeploy and adding external modules? I am currently using pyqtdeploy (version 1.2) together with PyQt 5.5.1 to write an application that can be deployed to an Android device. Without any external modules, the freezing with pyqtdeploy works pretty well. However, I am not really sure how I can add external modules (not pure Python ones) to my application.
In particular, I want to add the external module pycrypto. Therefore, I downloaded the pycrypto sourcecode, compiled it with the Android toolchain (from the Android NDK) and now I have a bunch of *.py and *.so files. How can I add them to my application?
My initial attempt was to add the *.py and the *.so files (so basically the whole pycrypto module) to the "Other Packages" tab in pyqtdeploy.
But now, when I import something pycrypto related in my application (from Crypto.Cipher import AES) i get the following error message:
File: ":/Crypto/Cipher/_AES.py", line 20 in __bootstrap__
TypeError: 'NoneType' object is not callable
The _AES.py file where the error is thrown, looks like this:
def __bootstrap__():
global __bootstrap__, __loader__, __file__
import sys, pkgutil, imp
__file__ = pkgutil.get_data(__name__,'_AES.cpython-34m.so')
__loader__ = None; del __bootstrap__, __loader__
imp.load_dynamic(__name__,__file__)
__bootstrap__()
At first I thought, that the *.so filename was just wrong and therefore, I got the NoneType Error, so I changed the filename in _AES.py to something other like 'test.so'. Surprisingly, now, I get a different error message than before:
File ":/pkgutil.py" line 629, in get_data
ImportError: qrcimporter: error opening file :/Crypto/Cipher/test.so
Ok, so the filename should be fine, right? But why do i get the 'NoneType` error message? What am I doing wrong? Is this the right way to accomplish this?
Any help is highly appreciated. I am pretty sure, that i'm only one small step away from getting this thing to work, but I can't figure out what i'm doing wrong.
Thanks!

Cyrillic app name incorrectly encoded during porting Android app to Blackberry

I have small problem with displaying cyrillic app name on PlayBook and BB10 simulator. Looks like it's incorrectly encoded from russian.
Problem appeared after updating bb eclipse plugin from version 1.3 to 1.5, with plugin v.1.3 it worked just ok.
I'll appreciate any help or ideas.
Here is screenshot from bb10 simulator:

I found workaround myself.
When I got problems with encodding with bb eclipse plugin, I decided to do the same thing with comandline tools.
After tools setup (sing keys, debug tokens, etc), I've tried to repackage my apk file with this command (source apk file was in apk/ folder and destination for bar file was bar/ folder)
./apk2bar apk/ -d bbplaybookdebugtoken.bar -t bar/ -a "zasadnyy" -cg
When I've got .bar file, I've installed it with command:
/batchbar-deploy bar/ 192.168.1.35 mysecretpass
Unfortunatelly result was unsuccsessful, app name was incorrectly encoded again. After first fail I've read documentation a bit more and tried to use this approach: http://developer.blackberry.com/android/documentation/creating_a_custom_manifest_file_2016828_11.htm...
When I unzipped bar file and opened MANIFEST.MS - I've found this line:
Application-Name: –ì–µ—Ä–æ–∏
According to documentation solution should be quite strainforward:
1. Rename MANIFEST.MS to <you apk name>.mf
2. Update incorrect properties, in my case I've changed line from above to "Application-Name: Герои"
3. Put edited manifest file in the same folder as <your apk name>.apk and rerun apk2bar tool with **-m** parameter, e.g.:
./apk2bar apk/ -d bbplaybookdebugtoken.bar -t bar/ -a "zasadnyy" -m -cg
Repackage, deploy, run and ..... and again FAIL. Application name was "–ì–µ—Ä–æ–∏".
After second fail, I decided to make dirty hack, I've edited MANIFEST.MF directly in repackaged bar file (Unzip -> edit manifest -> zip -> change file extension to .bar).
Deploy updated .bar file to playbook and .... YEAH, we've got cyrilic app name!
Conclusion and FIX:
Looks like in 1.5 release if apk2bar tool manifest encoding is misconfigured (in ver. 1.3 it worked just ok)
In oder to FIX issue: Unzip unsigned bar file -> edit manifest -> zip -> change file extension back to .bar

I had the same problem I believe, but the symptoms have been different. I was not even able to install the app on my test device and explicitly running blackberry-signer -verify confronted me with the Invalid signature file digest for Manifest. error.
The MANIFEST.MF file seems to be properly encoded in utf-8 by the apk2bar tool, but the following signing process seems to read this using the platform's default encoding. I added the following java parameter to the blackberry-signer.bat as well as the apk2bar.bat batch file scripts of the command line tools to make it work properly:
-Dfile-encoding=utf-8
(This is for version 1.5.2 of the tools)

How to build i686-linux-android-gfortran for android-ndk8b (x86 arch Android)?

I tried building i686-linux-android-gfortran using build-gcc.sh following this
(it's for androdindk-7b) but I get error about link.h. I added link.h from here, but it gives further more errors.
Has anyone tried enabling i686-linux-android-gfortran for x86 Android?

From https://groups.google.com/forum/#!msg/android-ndk/QR1qiN0jIpE/g0MHkhTd4YMJ as selalerer suggested. I didn't try this, so I'm posting as a community wiki for reference purposes.
Fortran for x86 Android
=================
The guide is based on this one, many thanks to Phil:
Compiling Android NDK with Objective-C-enabled gcc errors
1) Download and unpack Android NDK 'android-ndk-r8c', (the older -r8b NDK won't work due to missing link.h!):
wget http://dl.google.com/android/ndk/android-ndk-r8c-linux-x86.tar.bz2
2) Create somewhere a folder called 'toolchain-src' (e.g. inside the folder android-ndk-r8c),
'cd' to this new folder
3) Make sure to have git installed ('yum install git' or whatever..) and download
the toolchain sources:
git clone https://android.googlesource.com/toolchain/build.git
git clone https://android.googlesource.com/toolchain/gmp.git
git clone https://android.googlesource.com/toolchain/gdb.git
git clone https://android.googlesource.com/toolchain/mpc.git
git clone https://android.googlesource.com/toolchain/mpfr.git
git clone https://android.googlesource.com/toolchain/expat.git
4) Create the folder 'binutils', 'cd' to this directory, unpack
binutils-2.23 there:
wget ftp.gnu.org/gnu/binutils/binutils-2.23.tar.gz
tar -xvzf binutils-2.23.tar.gz
You should now have a folder toolchain-src/binutils/binutils-2.23
5) Change to folder toolchain-src/build, edit the Makefile.in, changing the line:
--with-gnu-as --with-gnu-ld --enable-languages=c,c++
to
--with-gnu-as --with-gnu-ld --enable-languages=c,c++,fortran
6) In the file android-ndk-r8c/build/tools/build-mingw64-toolchain.sh change the line:
var_append GCC_CONFIGURE_OPTIONS "--enable-languages=c,c++"
to
var_append GCC_CONFIGURE_OPTIONS "--enable-languages=c,c++,fortran"
7) In the file android-ndk-r8c/build/tools/build-gcc.sh, change the line:
EXTRA_CONFIG_FLAGS=$EXTRA_CONFIG_FLAGS" --disable-libquadmath --disable-plugin"
to
EXTRA_CONFIG_FLAGS=$EXTRA_CONFIG_FLAGS" --disable-libquadmath --disable-libquadmath-support --disable-plugin"
8) In the file android-ndk-r8c/build/tools/build-host-gcc.sh, change the line:
ARGS=$ARGS" --enable-languages=c,c++"
to
ARGS=$ARGS" --enable-languages=c,c++,fortran"
And change the line
ARGS=$ARGS" --disable-libquadmath --disable-plugin --disable-libitm --disable-bootstrap"
to
ARGS=$ARGS" --disable-libquadmath --disable-libquadmath-support --disable-plugin --disable-libitm --disable-bootstrap"
9) Build your new toolchain:
/your/path/to/android-ndk-r8c/build/tools/build-gcc.sh -j1 --gmp-version=5.0.5 --mpfr-version=2.4.2 --mpc-version=0.8.1 --binutils-version=2.23 --gdb-version=7.3.x /your/path/to/toolchain-src /your/path/to/android-ndk-r8c x86-4.7
(don't worry about messages like 'expr: warning: unportable BRE:')
10) And go down to your knees in front of the screen, praying to the Lord that somehow these
countless configure scripts doing checks that nobody needs, using an ugly shell language
that cooks your brain with indentation going from right to left, will somehow manage to
compile a zillion of far too small files (so that 10% of the time is spent on compilation
and 90% on starting up GCC), and after an hour of watching progress with
tail -F /tmp/ndk-YourUserName/build/toolchain/config.log
your toolchain will be magically ready. You'll find it in the android-ndk-r8c/toolchains folder.
11) Finally, 'cd' to the folder
'/your/path/to/android-ndk-r8c/toolchains/x86-4.7/prebuilt/linux-x86/i686-linux-android'
and run this command:
ln -s ../libexec libexec
Without this command, it may happen that g++ raises the error message
"g++: fatal error: -fuse-linker-plugin, but liblto_plugin.so not found".
Using strace, I found that g++ looks in the wrong folder, but the link
above lets it find the file liblto_plugin.so nevertheless.
And here are a few lessons learned on the way, so that Google finds this page:
*) To speed up the compilation, you can remove the '-j1'. But only after you got
it to work once, since building in parallel on multiple CPU cores was reported to
cause additional troubles.
*) The error message "Link tests are not allowed after GCC_NO_EXECUTABLES" shows up
when linking fails for x86 (works for ARM). The reason is that GCC does not include
the proper ANDROID_STARTFILE_SPEC and ANDROID_ENDFILE_SPEC from
gcc-4.6.1/gcc/config/linux-android.h. GCC 4.6.1 only specifies them for ARM, but not
for i386, GCC 4.8.0 however does. The GCCs downloaded from Google also do,
so best use Google's GCC.
*) The error message "fatal error: link.h: No such file or directory" also happens
with Google's GCC, and apparently (http://gcc.gnu.org/bugzilla/show_bug.cgi?id=50877)
only when you enable additional languages like objc or fortran.
The bug thread is here: http://gcc.gnu.org/ml/gcc-bugs/2012-08/msg00494.html
MIPS has link.h in android-ndk-r8b/platforms/android-9/arch-mips/usr/include
In android-ndk-r8c, link.h is now also present in android-9/arch-x86/usr/include/link.h,
so this bug was fixed.
*) The error message "fatal error: quadmath_weak.h: No such file or directory":
It also happens with the latest gcc-4.8, so we can just continue using Googles GCC 4.7.
Google itself uses --disable-libquadmath, but we additionally need --disable-libquadmathsupport
(see http://gcc.gnu.org/bugzilla/show_bug.cgi?id=47648). So this needs to be added in
android-ndk-r8c/build/tools/build-gcc.sh
and
android-ndk-r8c/build/tools/build-host-gcc.sh
*) The error message "error: Pthreads are required to build libatomic"
Happens when building the ARM version of gcc-4.8 downloaded from gnu.org,
better stay with Google's GCCs.
*) The GCC that came with android-ndk-r8c didn't work for me (error message about
libstdc++.so.6 being too old), while the one in android-ndk-r8b worked
without problems. Since the android-ndk should support as many environments
as possible, I'm not sure why the Googlers decided to depend on a newer libstdc++,
but the good news are that building your own toolchain solves the issue.
*) If you get an error while compiling generic-morestack.c, then replace
#ifdef linux
// On Linux, the first two real time signals are used by the NPTL
with
#if defined(GLIBC) && defined(linux)
// On Linux, the first two real time signals are used by the NPTL