Package a Android APP with Buildozer

Summary: Package a Android APP with Buildozer.

Contents:

• 1. Introduction
• 2. The environment and the code
  • 2.1 Installing solftware
  • 2.2 Creating virtual environment
  • 2.3 The code
• 3. Packaging the APP
• 4. Some errors to be solved

1. Introduction

This blog records my first try with packaging python code to Andriod APP with Buildozer. Once the first packaging successfully, the following packaging process will be very smoothly without pain.

Right now Buildozer only works on linux, So linux system should be installed.

Recommends:

• Install Ubuntu in VirtualBox
• Develop the code with VScode

2. The environment and the code

2.1 Installing solftware

• VirtualBox https://www.virtualbox.org/
• Install Ubuntu20.04 in Virtualbox
• To save time, assign more processors with Ubuntu when packaging
• Install VScode

2.2 Creating virtual environment

Reference: https://kivy.org/doc/stable/gettingstarted/installation.html

• Creating virtual environment
• conda create -n envname python=3.9

or

python -m virtualenv envname

• Activating the virtual env

  conda activate envname

• Installing Kivy

  python -m pip install kivy[base] kivy_examples

• Installing Buildozer

  pip install buildozer

2.3 The code

Create a folder, and add main.py with below code. This code is from https://kivy.org/doc/stable/examples/gen__application__app_with_build__py.html

import kivy
kivy.require('1.0.7')

from kivy.app import App
from kivy.uix.button import Button

class TestApp(App):

    def build(self):
        # return a Button() as a root widget
        return Button(text='hello world')

if __name__ == '__main__':
    TestApp().run()

3. Packaging the APP

Move to the folder, run

buildozer init

A file buildozer.spec has been created. Open the file, you can edit the app name, source file extensions, requirements, etc.

After editing the .spec file, you can run below command to package the android app.

buildozer android debug

If everything workds fine, the final apk file will be in the bin folder. But that’s not the case at mose time.

4. Some errors to be solved

• Git not found

  sudo apt install git
  

• java, javac not found

  sudo apt install openjdk-11-jre-headless
  sudo apt install openjdk-11-jdk-headless
  

• Cython note found

  pip install Cython
  

• scipy is not found
• autoconf, automake, libtoolize, libffi not found

Try all below

  sudo apt-get install zliblg-dev

  sudo apt install autoconf
  sudo apt-get install automake autoconf libltdl-dev

  sudo apt install build-essential libltdl-dev libffi-dev libssl-dev

After any correting, run the package command as

buildozer android clean debug