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Monday 16 July 2012

Build your own: XBMC for Android from Ubuntu 12.04

Firstly massive credit to the XBMC team for pulling off the feat that is XBMC on Android. I'll bet though you're desperate to try it yourself. I'll respect XBMC and not share my build (I couldn't support it if I did) but here is a recipe for Ubuntu 12.04 users. Or equally, Windows users because you can't install using the Windows Android SDK. First, for Windows users, install Oracle VirtualBox. Then install Ubuntu 12.04 using the mini net-install CD (this gets you less packages you don't need). The instructions in the XBMC repository (docs/README.android) are then fairly complete, except for covering all of the dependencies you need. You must: sudo apt-get install build-essential git-core default-jdk autoconf autopoint curl zip unzip zlib1g-dev gawk gperf ant Then when building the android depends for configure you need: ./configure --build=arm-linux-androideabi --with-sdk=/home/user/android-sdk-linux --with-ndk=/home/user/android-ndk-r7-crystax-5.beta2 --with-toolchain=/home/user/android-sdk-linux/platforms/android-10 --with-tarballs=/home/user If you've never built anything with the Android SDK on this machine you have to generate a debug.keystore using ant debug on any random (a blank project will do) Android project before running make. And the veru last step in the documentation is wrong. The APK you want to install is in the root of the source named xbmcapp-*-debug.apk.