How can I compile Dalvik to run it locally on Linux?

Question

What are the minimal steps necessary (including retrieving the source code) to compile and run just the Dalvik virtual machine on Linux?

Answer 1

Actually , I got Dalvik working on my elementary OS installation.

First download the Android AOSP source tree using https://source.android.com/source/downloading.html. Wait for it to download (2 hours for me cloning only the current commits and Marshmallow branch)

After running build/envsetup.sh while in the source tree run lunch full_x86-eng. Then type make -jN (replace N with number of cores).

WAIT. This took me about 1 hour on an AMD-4500M laptop. Newer ccomputers may be as low as half and hour and older ones might take half a day.

Change directory to !!AOSP-PATH!!/out/host/linux-x86/bin/ and run export LD_LIBRARY_PATH=$LD_LIBRARY_PATH:!!AOSP-PATH!!/out/host/linux-x86/obj/lib/ or

export LD_LIBRARY_PATH=$LD_LIBRARY_PATH:!!AOSP-PATH!!/out/host/linux-x86/lib

or export LD_LIBRARY_PATH=$LD_LIBRARY_PATH:!!AOSP-PATH!!/out/host/linux-x86/lib64

TRY ALL OF THESE

and then ./dalvikvm --32. If you try to run without the --32 option it will crash (don't know why)

Working Marshmallow Dalvik. To get the GUI apps working you will need to do some more porting and coding which is another project which I am working on.

Took me half a day to figure this out.

References

http://milk.com/kodebase/dalvik-docs-mirror/docs/hello-world.html

Answer 2

Use sabayon Linux. This is a distro that can natively run Android programs and all Linux ones too.