Development for Anbox in UBports
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Hi!
I am looking on ways to do some bug fixing and adding some functionalities to the current version of Anbox available for UBports. I have been looking around quite a lot now and I am having trouble building and installing from source Anbox.
So far, I managed to compile Anbox successfully by:
- Creating a development container based on Xenial, including the necessary packages for the build.
- Opening https://github.com/ubports/anbox in the container and executing cross-compile-chroot.sh.
Following the steps on the Anbox development thread, I went ahead and copied the generated binary file to
/usr/bin/. This seemed to go well, since I managed to log into the Anbox container using adb, however, I can't get any application to start, and I don't know if that is due to the Anbox version or something missing in the installation.Does someone know how to compile and run this, and how to access logs and debug information from the Anbox container?
Is someone working on this, or has a plan to do so?Thank you!
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maybe call for help also in issues on Anbox repository ?
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I thought on doing so, but if I understand it correctly, their development diverged from the version used in UBports a while ago, when they moved to use snaps.
I guess that it might be possible to then set up a libertine container with snaps and install anbox on it, and then it would be completely an Anbox issue, but I posted here as well to know whether there is any development of Anbox for UBports.
I am also not sure about the performance difference between installing anbox in natively and running it in a libertine container. Has someone tried it out?
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@gimait I'm not a developer but I can assure you snaps are not supported in libertine yet, and that such a maneuver would result in something even less functional that the anbox we have. But at any rate, please continue trying to improve anbox !!
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@Emphrath Thanks for pointing that out! I guess that ticks the current anbox version out of the question.
I have been looking into merging the current anbox into the ubports fork to see if it would be possible to have two targets for anbox, but yeah, we will see.. For now I don't know even how build and run anbox on my phone, so there might be some time to get there. Any help will be very welcome
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@gimait what device are you trying to run your compiled version of Anbox on? Is there a kernel available with the necessary patches for that device? Or are the patches already included in the bundled kernel?
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@arubislander I’m using a Nexus 5, where I installed Anbox via apt successfully, so I think that the firmware of the device is not the issue, but honestly, I have no idea. Any ideas of something I might be missing in the build process, or something that needs configuring on the device?
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@gimait You do know there is already an Anbox build for Nexus 5? Just follow the following instruction minus the first green box. No need to flash the kernel. It's pre-built in the Nexus 5.
http://docs.ubports.com/en/latest/userguide/dailyuse/anbox.html
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@gimait I have never tried building Anbox for Ubuntu Touch myself, so I cannot offer any guidance there...
But @rocket2nfinity confirms that no special kernel is needed. -
@rocket2nfinity Thank you, that’s the way I installed anbox originally, and that is fine. I’m happy to hear that there is no need for kernel patches.
Do you have any ideas of how to build the code from source and test it on the device? I have no problems with the current anbox version (apart from several bugs that need taking care of to make it usable), but I’m trying to doing some development, that could become a good contribution to both anbox and ubports. Has someone tried this? -
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@rocket2nfinity thank you for letting me know, I’ll try to reach him, I’m sure he can get me started
In the meantime I’ll continue digging, and maybe follow your suggestion and asking in some thread in anbox. thanks! -
@gimait This thread specifically....
https://forums.ubports.com/topic/1676/development-testers-for-anbox
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Pinging @Flohack again as the last Q&A blogpost specifically says We are still waiting on developers with the necessary skill set to step forward. Unusually, we are even able to offer payment for core work on Anbox. Just get in touch with Florian.
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@Fla Ping yes, what do you need
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@Flohack It's not me but @gimait who compiled Anbox locally but can't make it run on his phone. He succeed to run the Anbox provided by UBPorts though.
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@Fla Yes already got in touch with him thx
