Replicant

h1. SDK

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h2. Introduction

The Android SDK as released by Google is distributed under a non-free license and suggests installing non-free plug-ins such as the Google APIs.

Replicant 4.2 and earlier provided its own SDK, built from source. The [[ReplicantSDK]] page holds a list of the previously released Replicant SDK builds.

With Replicant 6.0, Replicant didn't invest time into releasing an SDK since several FSF certified distributions already shipped an Android 6.0 compatible SDK. The associated "blog post":https://blog.replicant.us/2017/04/there-wont-be-a-replicant-6-0-sdk-because-there-is-already-something-better/ has more details about this choice.

There is a new project to rebuild SDK in https://codeberg.org/Starfish/SDK-Rebuilds. It can build Imagepipe and TinyWeatherForecastGermany that are being review in [[F-DroidAndApplications#section-7]] and that have fully free source code and no external dependencies. The SDK build scripts are tested and kept up to date. So at the time of writing are currently trying to organize to build the Android SDK with these scripts and publish them. The author of these script also told us that he can respond to bug reports about freedom for instance in cases where nonfree code is found inside the SDK source code. He can also add support for FSDG compliant distributions if users test them. Since we're organizing to to setup builds for the SDK we'll most likely use Trisquel to build them to have Trisquel automatically supported.

h2. GNU/Linux distributions

The following FSF certified distributions have Android SDKs:

| Distribution          | Gradle version  | Android versions   |

| PureOS 9 (amber)      | 4.4.1           | 6.0 (API Level 23) |

| PureOS 10 (byzantium) | 4.4.1           | 6.0 (API Level 23) |

| Trisquel 9 (etiona)   | 3.4.1           | 6.0 (API Level 23) |

| Trisquel 10 (nabia)   | 4.4.1           | 6.0 (API Level 23) |

At the time of writing, Guix, Hyperbola, Parabola don't have an SDK, and the other FSF certified distributions weren't checked but are unlikely to have packages for an Android SDK.

The following distributions are also known to have an Android SDK:

| Distribution         | Gradle version  | Android versions   |

| Debian  9 (stretch)  | 3.2.1           | 6.0 (API Level 23) |

| Debian 10 (buster)   |                 |                    |

| Debian 11 (bullseye) | 4.4.1           | 6.0 (API Level 23) |

The [[F-DroidAndApplications]] wiki page also has information on attempts to build Android packages with these SDKs.

h2. Attempts to go further than Android 6.0

At some point there was an Android Rebuilds project that provided free SDKs at https://android-rebuilds.beuc.net/ but the author mentions that the project ended in 2021[1]. 

That project also lacked a license. That led "another project by wchen342":https://github.com/wchen342/android-rebuilds to restart from scratch. 

Wchen342's reimplementation is tested ungoogled-chromium-android and uses debian 12 (bookworm) through docker. It might be possible to use PureOS instead when the equivalent PureOS version is released.

F-Droid also has a "forum post":https://forum.f-droid.org/t/call-for-help-making-free-software-builds-of-the-android-sdk/4685 that asks for help with that as they currently rely on the nonfree SDKs and they want to fix that.

fn1. "Android Rebuilds, how to rebuild SDK/NDK, precisely, without non-free EULA (2015-2021)" on https://www.beuc.net/

h2. Replicant SDK

See [[ReplicantSDKUsage]] for more details about SDKs up to Replicant 4.2.