Isn't there a way to run Android-apps on ARM-Linux?


lomaxx

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As the topic says I am wondering if there isn't a way to run Android-apps on an ARM-linux without porting/running the complete AndroidOS. I am thinking of something like what WINE is for Windows-apps. The app would be run in a window of the native OS. Unfortunately I haven't seen something like this, which surprises me to some extent.

Is something like this possible with less effort than porting Android to the Pandora? What about http://androvm.org/blog/about? Sounds to be something in that direction. Though I have not clue what exactly it does.
 
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There may well be.

Not sure what sort of magic was required to get Angry Birds running but it does work really well and is the Android version.
 
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You would need the java virtual machine that runs android apps on arm linux to make this happen.


Angry birds was a simple repack of the n900 version. It uses normal armlinux executable.
 
Angry birds wasn't a repack of the n900 version - it used the same libarm.so dynamic library as the android apk.  It opened the librarary with dlopen() and remapped the Android specific calls into Pandora-specific ones.  It was a very impressive technical feat - it's a shame that whoever did it couldn't make themselves known.  If they'd published the code, it could maybe have been extended to work with other stuff.

Most Android apps aren't like Angry Birds though, which has most of it's code natively compiled to a dynamic library, with just a Java frontend to interface with it.  Most apps are written completely in Java, so they'll be playable across different platforms.  In theory, if you could seperate the Dalvik runtime from the Android stack, you could run them using that.  In practice though, most apps are so integrated into the Android ecosystem, there's probably no easy way to run them without porting over such a significant part of Android that you may as well be running that OS in the first place.

This is all just my opinion though (I'm often wrong). 
 
Here is an interesting project that tries to achieve similar things with game-specific modules, see:

http://thp.io/2012/apkenv/

Testing it on pandora is on my TODO list, but if someone wants to do it before me, please go ahead (would be nice if they announced it so that effort is not duplicated).
 
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You would need the java virtual machine that runs android apps on arm linux to make this happen.


Angry birds was a simple repack of the n900 version. It uses normal armlinux executable.
Wasn't that version free? Wondering if it might be allowed to host on the repo.

Back to topic: I started a thread about this (more or less) a few weeks ago http://boards.openpandora.org/index.php/topic/10989-p2-integrating-android-and-linux/


2) Run Android apps under Linux in Myriad Alien Dalvik

http://www.linuxfordevices.com/c/a/News/Myriad-Group-Myriad-Alien-Dalvik/


5) Android Mainlining Project

http://elinux.org/Android_Mainlining_Project


"The goal of this project is to ultimately mainline all patches required to run the current released version of Android.


6) apkenv -environment wrapper for native android apks - can run a few android programs

http://thp.io/2012/apkenv/

https://github.com/thp/apkenv/blob/master/README


Here is a chart giving an overview of the OS components that need to be merged: http://techie-buzz.com/mobile-news/android-mainlining-project-takes-android-back-to-the-source.html


Here is Canonical's working dual-distro (mainlined android+linux kernel)

http://www.ubuntu.com/devices/android


The impressive thing is Canonical delivers synching contacts, calendars and bookmarks between Ubuntu and Android. There are videos of it floating around.


Hope this helps
 
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