android-studio can't work with read-only sdk from nixstore

[jagajaga]

So the name tells it all. Using the latest android-studio from master I can't create a new project because of that error.
Imgur

[jagajaga]

cc @the-kenny

[jagajaga]

The solution I've found is to use this nix-shell configuration. Download both android-studio and android-sdk from google and run it. Also I've told android-studio that my android-sdk is located in a folder of extracted android-sdk I've downloaded from google.

[the-kenny]

Good to hear you got it working! I wonder why android-studio even needs writable paths. Things like react-native work just fine. Did you try if the fhsUserEnv allows you to install other sdk packages via the android tool?

[Mathnerd314]

This seems similar to #8650.

[bobvanderlinden]

@jagajaga That seems to me like the way to go for Android development. Is there some way to get that into nixpkgs in a clean manner? At the moment Android Studio seems useless on NixOS without such FHS additions. The package for Steam seems to do something similar.

Edit:
@the-kenny it doesn't seem to me you can install packages using android, as pkgs.androidenv.androidsdk_6_0_extras is being used as ANDROID_HOME. It might be better to put androidsdk in $HOME and let android/android-studio do its thing with packages. It does go against the philosophy behind NixOS, but the applications seem too entangled and reliant on writable ANDROID_HOME to be practical. It seems similar to how Steam is working atm.

[Sicaine]

Is it possible to fix this through the package itself or is the nix-shell the only solution?

[phunehehe]

@jagajaga I wonder how do you deal with missing development headers as described in http://stackoverflow.com/q/29241640/168034?

[jagajaga]

@phunehehe somehow :)

[phunehehe]

@jagajaga I hoped that somehow doesn't involve invoking apt-get :)

[bjornfor]

Isn't there something that can be done here? I mean, we got steam packaged...!

[bobvanderlinden]

See #8650 (comment). Basically use buildFHSChrootEnv to create a chroot environment that looks like Debian and run Android Studio and android inside it. It is possible to do this as a package in nixpkgs, but I haven't found how yet. Steam seems to use a similar scheme, so that would be a first step.

The chroot will allow the use of binaries like mksdcard without patching. When that works, it should be possible to use android for package management. I'd set ANDROID_HOME to your home directory (probably ~/.android) or some other user-writable directory and let android figure out its dependencies on its own.

This is far from ideal what you want on NixOS, but I don't see a practical alternative. Handling dependencies of Android in NixOS (like how it is packaged right now) seems like maintenance hell. A lot needs to be patched to get the IDE working: both Android Studio and android can be used to handle Android packages, so they both need to be patched. In addition any binary that android downloads needs to be patched with the right rpaths to the right versions of libraries. Making android and Android Studio handle the dependencies themselves seems like a more practical solution.

[phunehehe]

@bobvanderlinden thanks! I just discovered that in parallel too, by looking for lib32, seeing build-fhs-chrootenv among the results and "oh wait this looks familiar to that shell.nix thing" :)

[Profpatsch]

Thank you very much, @phunehehe.