Launching Emulator without Android Studio

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1

Hello everybody.
Has anybody managed to launch emulators for Android app development without Android Studio? Android Studio is quite heavy to run, and I mostly need just emulator to test some things - but doing it on NixOS turned out to be extra painful.

So far I have found this topic - in which the OP didn’t find a solution.

I followed his link -Nixpkgs Reference Manual - and did everything by the book, but I get an error sayin that “androidenv” is undefined.

Android Studio itself runs fine, and emulator inside of it too - but its super laggy to run it on my laptop.
Can somebody share their setup or steps, so that Ideally I would be able to only launch emulators via CLI without Android Studio?

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2

from the nixpkgs reference manual link above

{
  pkgs ? import <nixpkgs> {
    config = {
      android_sdk.accept_license = true;
      allowUnfree = true;
    };
  },
}:
pkgs.androidenv.emulateApp {
  name = "emulate-MyAndroidApp";
  platformVersion = "33";
  abiVersion = "x86_64"; # armeabi-v7a, mips, x86_64
  systemImageType = "google_apis_playstore";
}

I’ve tried this, and an emulator does come up with nix-build && ./result/bin/run-test-emulator can you check if it doesn’t work for you?

if <nixpkgs> is not working you can try one of the methods mentioned here and use the nixos-unstable branch.

And if you post under Help category on discourse, you can mark a comment as a solution (if it ever gets solved)

1 Like
3

Thank you for replying!
I am sorry - I am not a big NixOS wizzard - having hard time with the config…

But I did what you said and at least, it rebuilt without any errors.

I did this:

 # Accepting licenses and allowing unfree packages
  nixpkgs.config = {
    android_sdk.accept_license = true;
    allowUnfree = true;
  };

  # Adding androidenv setup to system packages
  environment.systemPackages = with pkgs; [
    # Other packages...
    (pkgs.androidenv.emulateApp {
      name = "emulate-MyAndroidApp";
      platformVersion = "33";
      abiVersion = "x86_64"; # armeabi-v7a, mips, x86_64
      systemImageType = "google_apis_playstore";
    })
  ];

But how do I run it? Does it also install “sdkmanager”, “avdmanager” - which, as I understood, are required to launch an emulator?
I built it successfully with your code, but how to launch this emulator?

4

As you added it to environment.systemPackages it will be in your environment as run-test-emulator. you can open a new terminal and try running run-test-emulator.

But I think project level shell.nix (or if you are familiar with flakes, a flake.nix) might be a better option.

1 Like
5

we can chat on matrix, @phanirithvij.matrix.org
search for phanirithvij on element if the link isn’t working

1 Like
6

Yes, now something is happening but I get this error:

[nikita@nixos:~]$ run-test-emulator
Looking for a free TCP port in range 5554-5584
* daemon not running; starting now at tcp:5037
* daemon started successfully
We have a free TCP port: 5554
[=======================================] 100% Fetch remote repository...       
Auto-selecting single ABI x86_64
Do you wish to create a custom hardware profile? [no] \nLaunch the emulator
Waiting until the emulator has booted the device and the package manager is ready...
INFO    | Storing crashdata in: /tmp/android-nikita/emu-crash-35.1.4.db, detection is enabled for process: 29520
INFO    | Android emulator version 35.1.4.0 (build_id 11672324) (CL:N/A)
INFO    | AVD device has path /tmp/nix-android-user-home-NLFY/avd/../avd/device.avd
INFO    | trying to check whether /home/nikita/Android/Sdk is a valid sdk root
WARNING | /home/nikita/Android/Sdk/system-images/android-33/google_apis_playstore/x86_64/ is not a valid directory.
WARNING | emulator has searched the above paths but found no valid sdk root directory.
PANIC: Broken AVD system path. Check your ANDROID_SDK_ROOT value [/nix/store/xvgh2brfbcjjziz516xpdfl8b0063xyk-androidsdk/libexec/android-sdk]!

Can you please add me on matrix chat? I am unable to add it, sorry again
@nikita0x:matrix.org

7

In the end, @phanirithvij answer was the solution.
But not only that - that godlike person spoon fed me NixOS information and patiently explained all my gaps and about nix, packages, system - everything for 4.30 hours!!!

I mean, not only he was patient and helpful but also super knowledgeable about NixOS.
If anybody need an expert - please contact and/or hire him!

1 Like