Awesome

HelloWorld.apk built with Nim and no Android Studio

To build the project, you will currently need the following prerequisites:

Nim compiler
Go compiler (TODO: remove this dependency — at least provide prebuilt binaries of apksigner)
Android NDK (the elephant in the room...)
- standalone toolchain — just download and unpack somewhere, no installation required afterwards (still, ~2.5GB unpacked)
...and: NO Java, NO JRE, NO Android Studio, NO Android SDK! 🎉

Build Steps

Compile the native JNI code, using Nim + Android NDK:

$ git clone https://github.com/akavel/hellomello
  # Edit `nim.cfg`: change `--clang.path=...` to a correct path to clang in your Android NDK directory.
  # Also: remove `.cmd` suffixes in `nim.cfg` if you are on Linux.
$ cd hellomello
$ nim c --app:lib --os:android --cpu=arm -d:noSignalHandler --hint[CC]:on hello.nim
$ mkdir lib
$ mkdir lib/armeabi-v7a
$ mv libhello.so lib/armeabi-v7a/libhello-mello.so
$ cd ..

Assemble the Dalvik bytecode (required to wrap the JNI library), using dali:

$ git clone https://github.com/akavel/dali
$ cd dali
$ nim c jni_hello.nim
$ ./jni_hello > ../hellomello/classes.dex
$ cd ..

Compile the manifest file to binary format, using marco:

$ git clone https://github.com/akavel/marco
$ cd marco
$ nimble build
$ cd ../hellomello
$ ../marco/marco < AndroidManifest0.xml > AndroidManifest.xml

Build an unsigned .apk, using OS-provided zip archiver:

$ zip -r unsigned.apk  classes.dex lib/ AndroidManifest.xml
  adding: classes.dex (172 bytes security) (deflated 44%)
  adding: lib/ (192 bytes security) (stored 0%)
  adding: lib/armeabi-v7a/ (192 bytes security) (stored 0%)
  adding: lib/armeabi-v7a/libhello-mello.so (172 bytes security) (deflated 60%)
  adding: AndroidManifest.xml (172 bytes security) (stored 0%)
$ cd ..

Sign the .apk, using apksigner tool written in Go:

$ git clone https://github.com/akavel/apksigner
$ cd apksigner
$ go build
$ cd ../hellomello
$ ../apksigner/apksigner -i unsigned.apk -o hello.apk -k key.pk8 -c key.x509.pem
$ unzip -l hello.apk
Archive:  hello.apk
  Length     Date   Time    Name
 --------    ----   ----    ----
      282  00-00-80 00:00   META-INF/MANIFEST.MF
      335  00-00-80 00:00   META-INF/CERT.SF
      436  00-00-80 00:00   META-INF/CERT.EC
       14  06-05-19 22:30   AndroidManifest.xml
     1060  06-05-19 22:29   classes.dex
   149348  06-05-19 22:28   lib/armeabi-v7a/libhello-mello.so
 --------                   -------
   151475                   6 files

...aaand you should have a hello.apk file now, ready to be installed on an ARM-based Android device. Worked For Me™... In case of problems installing or opening the apk on your device, try running adb logcat (yep, that requires Android Studio... or you could try python-adb). I suggest searching for "InstallInstall" and "InstallFail" messages, verifier/verification messages, and Java-like exception stack traces. You're welcome to post your problems as issues on this repository, but I can't promise I will be able to help you in any way. We can treat them as "observations" or "reports". Maybe someone else will come by and suggest some steps for future experimenters.

/Mateusz Czapliński.
2019-05-06