Common Android Deployment issues

[simon.schvartzman]

Guys many thanks for your suggestions but I'm completely lost , no matter what I do I get the following error.

p1.jpeg (28.38 KiB) Viewed 7653 times

I have paid for my LC Indy license for at least 4 years now (last time I paid in advance for two years) and I refuse to believe that I can't get better support to solve this issue.

I would think being able to deploy to Android is a significant feature for LC and is really difficult to cope with the lack of updated documentation and the frustration of 3+ days without any real progress in spite of the hints from @jaque & @sphere.

Those are the times when I think if LC is really the way to go

[bogs]

I have paid for my LC Indy license for at least 4 years now (last time I paid in advance for two years) and I refuse to believe that I can't get better support to solve this issue.

You can get better support, this is only the forum end where end users help other end users. Since you are a license holder, I'd suggest contacting the company directly from the livecode.com web page, which will set up an email exchange between you and Lc itself.

[sphere]

on my hackintosh i had a similair issue.
So finally i removed Android Studio (so i don't have the commandline version) and all Java related stuff, then installed the JDK and Android Studio again.
Suddenly it worked. I have no exact clue why. Even though i pointed to the correct folder, it did not accepted it. After reinstall it did.
On Windows it worked OK.

What i really do mis is: you can't type or copy/paste the folder into the field for the Android sdk in the LC preferences, you have to do it by clicking on the dots and searching the folder.

[jacque]

@Simon, it looks like you have the command line tools installed. In Finder, find the SDK you installed and search for a file called "android". Mine is in <SDK folder>/tools/android

Double click "android" to let terminal launch the Java app. You should see the SDK manager and a list of all files available with those that are installed tagged. Take a screenshot of the window and post it here. It may be that your existing SDK just needs to be updated. See if any of the above files have updates available and download those.

If you don't see any of that then it may be true your SDK isn't valid. Delete your SDK, or move and rename it. Go here: https://developer.android.com/studio/. Scroll to the bottom of the page and download the Mac command line tools (zip file.) Unzip and install. Then open the "android" file and launch the SDK Manager.

You need the Android SDK Tools, Android SDK Platform-tools, and Android SDK Build-tools. Build-tools should be version 28.0.1 or higher (I'm still using 28.0.1 and it works.)

You also need the Android 4.0.3 package, and also, optionally, any other packages you might want to emulate. I have Android 6.0 installed as well as several other lesser versions. When installing the Android version packages you don't need all the files, usually only the SDK Platform file for each version is enough.

[simon.schvartzman]

Hi @jaque, I really appreciate your time and patience to help me...it seems my "android" file is gone, so I followed your instructions and downloaded a fresh version of the SDK command line for Mac.

After unziping I got this files:

When double clicking on Android I get this (which seems to me that says something went wrong)

When double clicking on the "sdkmanager" file inside the "bin" folder I get this

and then I hit the wall again...

I feel really dumb but one of the reasons I bought LC (instead of going to Xamarin or Reactive) was because it is a high level tool that would shield me from the kind of troubles I'm experiencing now.

[jacque]

Don't feel dumb, it looks like something's changed. I'm running a very old installation and I don't see what you do. I agree it's time for someone on the team to set us straight, it will help more people than just you. This is a common roadblock.

I agree it's time to contact support. It would help if you ask them to post to the list as well, for posterity's sake. Or maybe you could post their answer here instead. (It's probably a good idea to make sure you've looked at the lesson first, just so you can say you've already done that.)

[simon.schvartzman]

@bogs & @jaque, I've followed your suggestion and have already contacted support (after following the Lesson on the subject which I did even before posting here).

I promise to post here the map to the treasure once I get it...

Best and thanks to all.

[jacque]

Thanks, you're doing a community service.

[bogs]

I agree with Jacque, this situation has nothing to do with being dumb. I don't develop for mobile, but I do read all the posts and this type of thing has been coming up a bit more than usual.

Anything new is going to be outside your realm of experience, as such it isn't something to feel "dumb" about. This does sound like something new is being thrown into the mix. The rest of us, and any newcomers, can certainly benefit from whatever you relay about the experience and resolution

[bwmilby]

Have you tried Android Studio? I just downloaded this a while back:
android-studio-ide-173.4907809-mac.dmg

Version is up to 181 now though. I opened the image and installed studio using the defaults. Once done I launched Android Studio.
There is a gear on the splash window when it opens that allows you to get to the SDK manager.
I have API 28, Android 8.0, and Android 4.0.3 installed.

The only tricky thing is mapping the SDK to LiveCode. The default install puts stuff in the Library folder which you can't navigate to from within LiveCode to select the folder.

From the Finder, hold down the Option key and click on the Go menu. Select Library. Open the Android folder. Make an alias of the SDK folder (right click for the option). Drag the alias to your desktop (or somewhere else convenient). In LiveCode, open Preferences and go to the Mobile Support tab. Click on the "..." to select the SDK folder and choose the alias that you created. LiveCode will expand it out to the actual path.

I have not been able to get the emulators to work at all, but I have been able to generate an apk and get that to work on my Amazon Fire.

[simon.schvartzman]

@bwmilby you saved my day (or should I say week).

You said

Have you tried Android Studio?

As I have downloaded Android Studio a few weeks ago (and deleted a few days ago when the problem started) I decided to go straight to your next step...

The only tricky thing is mapping the SDK to LiveCode...

The files where already there (probably from the previous installation)

From the Finder,...

So I did and it worked!!!

I have not been able to get the emulators to work at all...

Neither was I but I don't care I can run on an actual device...

Many, many thanks

[oleung]

I am new to LiveCode and trying to develop Android app using LiveCode. Keep finding difficult to create Android Emulator that can work well in Android Studio. As guided from the reference link, only ARM CPU are supported in LiveCode and this make running the emulator be a challenge, it's slow and not stable. I keep trying different combination and not easily get the right set to go.

So, I want to ask if most developers here do use physical Android device in testing and not Android emulation. Would there be X86 CPU support in LiveCode soon in Android environment.

It would be great if some one can share your insights here.

Thanks.

Oliver

[simon.schvartzman]

Hi Oliver, I gave up using the emulator and use a real device now. This is isn't ideal because it takes longer and limits my testing to the devices I have available (which of course are quite limited).

LC has plenty of opportunities to improve the documentation and guidelines on this subject...

[oleung]

Thanks Simon, absolutely.

I follow LiveCode development roadmap few years now and seeing they have committed to devote on various enhancement in mobile platform support. But few a bit loss when I try to dig into this deeper on seeing what has happened here. Thinking would this be my issue only?

[jacque]

I don't use the emulator either, it's too slow. I find it faster to just build directly to the device. The build time is the same either way, and overall the download to the device takes less time than the time waiting for the emulator to respond.

Maybe it's better now, I haven't tried the emulator for some years.