I'm not an Android developer, but I plan to learn this along with the Kotlin language. The Android Studio seems to have proprietary components and therefore marked as non-FOSS on Flathub store. The Android SDK specifically (at least builds provided by Google) is also seems to be licensed under non-FOSS license.

Android Studio is a powerful IDE with rich toolbox for Android development, but it feels like strong lock-in on closed technology even in case we have Android as a FOSS platform in face of AOSP.

I'm just curious to learn, is Android development can be setup to be 100% FOSS? What environment, toolchain, and editors like IntelliJ IDEA CE/VSCodium/Neovim we can possibly use to achieve this?

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[–] nutbutter@discuss.tchncs.de 16 points 2 days ago (2 children)

I have made flutter apps without Android Studio. You basically needed to download the SDK which is FOSS, and then tell your IDE where it is. This process may be a little tedious. Android Studio makes everything easy, like automatically downloading the SDK, setting up emulators etc. I jsed VSCodium back then.

[–] apparia@discuss.tchncs.de 2 points 1 day ago* (last edited 1 day ago)

Flutter is just a UI framework, it still depends on the Android SDK.

[–] DWolf_19@lemmy.ml 5 points 2 days ago

Oh, that's interesting!

[–] piter9@lemmy.zip 6 points 2 days ago (1 children)

You could use intelij idea open (you can find it on flathub, it is marked as FOSS) with the android plugin will give you a similar experience to Android Studio. It worked for me well and I think all things were FOSS.

[–] DWolf_19@lemmy.ml 2 points 2 days ago

Thanks! It worth exploring

[–] apparia@discuss.tchncs.de 2 points 1 day ago* (last edited 1 day ago)

I've also just started learning Android dev, avoiding Android Studio. So far I've followed this blog and have a Java "Hello World" app building out of a makefile (without even Gradle!), but using the Google SDK and build tools.

I believe the build tools are FOSS, but I didn't know that about the SDK; just searching now Replicant has some links to FOSS SDK-related things but that page hasn't been updated in 2 years and nothing seems very easy. Would be interested to hear if you manage to get a FOSS version working.

[–] pr06lefs@lemmy.ml 2 points 2 days ago

I build a Tauri app without Android Studio, with 'cargo tauri android build'. you still need the android SDK.

[–] IanTwenty@piefed.social 1 points 2 days ago

I tried with neovim plus SDK, had to give up due to lack of decent LSPs I think, they were all old, unmaintained. Android Studio really sucks all the oxygen out of the room.