Delta Chat Android Client

This is the Android client for Delta Chat. It is available on F-Droid and the Google Play Store. The APK can also be downloaded from GitHub (only for experienced users).

For the core library and other common info, please refer to the Delta Chat Core Library.

Check Out Repository

When checking out deltachat-android, make sure also to check out the subproject deltachat-core-rust:

When using Git, you can do this initially by $ git clone --recursive https://github.com/deltachat/deltachat-android or later by git submodule update --init --recursive. If you do this in your home directory, this results in the folder ~/deltachat-android which is just fine.

Build Using Dockerfile

If you only want to build an APK, the easiest way is to use provided Dockerfile with Docker or Podman. Podman is a drop-in replacement for Docker that does not require root privileges. It is used in the following example.

First, build the image deltachat-android by running

podman build . -t deltachat-android

Then, run the image:

podman run -it -v $(pwd):/home/app -w /home/app localhost/deltachat-android

Within the container, build the native library first:

root@6012dcb974fe:/home/app# ./ndk-make.sh

Then, build an APK:

root@6012dcb974fe:/home/app# ./gradlew assembleDebug

If you don't want to use Docker or Podman, proceed to the next section.

Install Build Environment

To setup build environment manually, you can read the Dockerfile and mimic what it does.

First, you need to setup Android SDK and Android NDK. Then, open ndk-make.sh in an editor and follow the instructions to set up a rust build environment. This is needed only once.

After that, call ./ndk-make.sh in the root directory to build core-rust. Afterwards run the project in Android Studio. The project requires API 25.

With chance, that's it :) - if not, read on how to set up a proper development environment.

Install Development Environment

Some libs required by Android Studio may be missing on 64 bit Linux machines Source], so for Ubuntu execute $ sudo apt-get install libc6:i386 libncurses5:i386 libstdc++6:i386 lib32z1 libbz2-1.0:i386 and for Fedora execute $ sudo yum install zlib.i686 ncurses-libs.i686 bzip2-libs.i686.
Download Android Studio from https://developer.android.com (android-studio-ide-...-linux.zip) and unpack the archive which contains a single folder called android-studio; move this folder e.g. to ~/android-studio.
To launch Android Studio for the first time, open a terminal, navigate to ~/android-studio/bin, execute ./studio.sh and use all the standard values from the wizard.
Android Studio now asks you if you want to open an existing project; choose ~/deltachat-android as created in the "Build" chapter (Android Studio starts to build the project, however, there are some steps missing before this will succeed).
If components are missing, click on the corresponding error message and install eg. required SDKs and the "Build-Tools" (you should also find the option at "Tools / Android / SDK Manager / SDK Platforms"). Now the build should succeed - but the app still misses the native part.
Download Android NDK from NDK Archives and extract the archive containing a single folder called android-ndk-r…; move this folder e.g. to ~/android-ndk-r….
Export the folder path to your environment as ANDROID_NDK and add it to PATH. You can achieve this e.g. by adding the following lines to .bashrc export ANDROID_NDK=/home/USERNAME/android-ndk-r… export PATH=$PATH:$ANDROID_NDK.

Credits

The user interface classes are based on the Signal messenger.

License

Licensed GPLv3+, see the LICENSE file for details.

marciopamplona / deltachat-android