Build for unofficially supported platforms

Local Desktop only ships binaries for ARM64-v8a. However, you can build APKs for other platforms from source.

warning

This is an advanced topic. Prepare to fix cross-compilation issues.

Build Libraries

First, you need to recompile all the libraries that Local Desktop depends on for your architecture.

libproot.so & libproot_loader.so

1. Set $ANDROID_NDK_HOME to the directory of your Android NDK.

2. In patches/build-proot-android/config, update ARCHS='aarch64' to the target architecture you want to build for.

3. Build:

   cd patches/build-proot-android/
   ./build.sh

4. After compilation succeeds, you will have these files:

   patches/build-proot-android/build/root-aarch64/root/bin/proot
   patches/build-proot-android/build/root-aarch64/root/libexec/proot/loader

   Copy these files into the assets folder, regarding to your architecture. For example:

   cp patches/build-proot-android/build/root-aarch64/root/bin/proot assets/libs/arm64-v8a/libproot.so
   cp patches/build-proot-android/build/root-aarch64/root/libexec/proot/loader assets/libs/arm64-v8a/libproot_loader.so

   Please check Android official documentation for the correct folder name. The binary name must start with lib and end with .so like above.

libxkbcommon.so

1. Ensure that you have Docker installed.

2. Run the follow command:

   cd patches/build-libxkbcommon
   ./build.sh

3. After compilation succeeds, you will have these files:

   patches/build-libxkbcommon/output/lib/libxkbcommon.so

   Copy it to the same libs/<architecture> folder as above.

   cp patches/build-libxkbcommon/output/lib/libxkbcommon.so assets/libs/arm64-v8a/

libwayland.so

Thanks to Smithay, you don't need to cross-compile libwayland.so anymore.

Build Local Desktop

libpolar_bear.so

If you extract Local Desktop APK, you would notice a file: libpolar_bear.so.

As you recall, Local Desktop is written in pure Rust. Now you know where all the Rust code goes.

Traditionally, you would need to build libpolar_bear.so using cargo. Then packaging it inside an APK, which technically a Zip file. To tell Android to load the *.so from the Native Activity, you would need to compose an AndroidManifest.xml file. Local Desktop uses Xbuild to do all of this.

After you have put all the required libraries above into assets/libs/<architecture>, you can build the APK with this command:

x build --release --platform=android --arch=<architecture>

Then you will find the APK file in target/x/debug/android/localdesktop.apk.