Android SDK tools install in Docker fails

Question

I am trying to make a docker image that I can use to build Android projects, using Shippable.

The problem is the android update sdk command, which gives the following error:

Installing Android SDK Tools, revision 24.2
  Failed to rename directory /opt/android-sdk-linux/tools to /opt/android-sdk-linux/temp/ToolPackage.old01.
  Failed to create directory /opt/android-sdk-linux/tools

I found somewhat of a solution here: https://stackoverflow.com/a/8839359/867099 but it's for Windows, and does not seem to fix the problem on linux. It appears that during the update command, the current directory is in use and therefore cannot be renamed.

My workaround sofar, using that workaroundsuggestion, is this:

RUN cp -r /opt/android-sdk-linux/tools /opt/android-sdk-linux/tools_copy

RUN cd /opt/android-sdk-linux/tools && echo 'y' | /opt/android-sdk-linux/tools_copy/android update sdk --no-ui -a --filter tools,platform-tools,build-tools-22.0.1,android-21,extra-android-support,extra-google-google_play_services --force

In order to automatically accept the license, I echo 'y' to the android command.

But I think the android command should also run in the correct directory, which is why I cd into it first.

But, it still fails. I'm rather stumped on how to fix this issue, so any help is appreciated.

------ UPDATE --------

I run the android sdk update command without the tools filter, and in the end, my gradle builds are successful. So I don't know for sure whether it's a problem to not update them...

Answer 1

This can be solved by combining all Android SDK commands in a single Dockerfile's RUN command. It has something to do with Docker's file system.

For a detailed explanation from a post on Issue Tracker for the Android Open Source Project:

The problem is caused when you run the SDK update in a Docker container. Docker uses a special filesystem which works like a version control system (e.g. git) and records all changes made to the filesystem. The problem is that the SDK update uses a hardlink move operation to move the 'tools' directory, which is not supported by the underlying Docker filesystem.

The solution for this is to simply run all Android SDK commands in a single 'RUN' command in Docker. That way, the hardlink move works as normal, as long as you don't use the 'hardlink move' operation between multiple RUN command (snapshots). The advantage of this is also that your Docker layers will be smaller (compared to running multiple seperate RUN commands).

Here is the line from the Dockerfile:

RUN wget https://dl.google.com/android/android-sdk_r24.4.1-linux.tgz && \
    tar xzf android-sdk_r24.4.1-linux.tgz && \
    rm android-sdk_r24.4.1-linux.tgz && \
    (echo y | android-sdk-linux/tools/android -s update sdk --no-ui --filter platform-tools,tools -a ) && \
    (echo y | android-sdk-linux/tools/android -s update sdk --no-ui --filter extra-android-m2repository,extra-android-support,extra-google-google_play_services,extra-google-m2repository -a) && \
    (echo y | android-sdk-linux/tools/android -s update sdk --no-ui --filter build-tools-23.0.2,android-24 -a)