Fresh brew install without Android Studio does not work properly

[pnewell]

Completely fresh, brand new Mac:

# Install Command Line Tools for Xcode
xcode-select --install

# Install Homebrew
/bin/bash -c "$(curl -fsSL https://raw.githubusercontent.com/Homebrew/install/HEAD/install.sh)"
echo 'eval "$(/opt/homebrew/bin/brew shellenv)"' >> ~/.zprofile
eval "$(/opt/homebrew/bin/brew shellenv)"

# Install Xcodes
brew install xcodesorg/made/xcodes

# Install Xcode
xcodes install --latest --experimental-unxip

# Install Swiftly
brew install swiftly
swiftly init --skip-install --assume-yes

# Install Java
brew install --cask temurin

# Install Skip
brew install skiptools/skip/skip

# Accept licenses
yes | sdkmanager --sdk_root=/opt/homebrew/share/android-commandlinetools --licenses

# Check Skip
skip checkup

skip checkup fails due to missing sdk.

I've tried adding the following to my .zprofile:

export ANDROID_HOME="/opt/homebrew/share/android-commandlinetools"
export ANDROID_SDK_ROOT="$ANDROID_HOME"
eval "export PATH="$PATH:$ANDROID_HOME/platform-tools:$ANDROID_HOME/cmdline-tools/latest/bin"

Now skip checkup will work. It also will then works when doing skip create (the initial terminal build fully works). But the first Xcode build fails again with missing SDK:

SDK location not found. Define a valid SDK location with an ANDROID_HOME environment variable or by setting the sdk.dir path in .../Android/local.properties 

I am not sure what I am missing but is it possible there is a gap in the Getting Started guidance?

[marcprux]

The ability to get running with Skip without a prior installation of Android Studio is relatively new, so it is definitely possible that there are some shortcomings. We don't hit these in CI because all the GitHub runners come pre-configured with an Android environment already setup.

I wonder if your .zprofile change is not being picked up by Xcode (until a system restart). What happens if you quit Xcode, and then open a new Terminal (one where ANDROID_HOME is set), and then open the project in Xcode with open Project.xcworkspace? Do you still see the same error?

[pnewell]

@marcprux Thanks for getting back to me. I tried a full system restart and still hit the same issue. Quitting Xcode and using open Project.xcworkspace from terminal did work.

[tinyhaggis]

Having to install Android Studio isn't really a big issue, since it also allows you to make modifications to the code after the fact when you want to make platform-specific modifications. It seems like an excess of work to try and make things work without it, and making it part of the prereqs wouldn't phase most developers. I do understand the disk space issue, especially if you're working on a base Mac mini M4 or something like that.

[marcprux]

Agreed that it isn't too much of a burden. Trying to remove it as a prerequisite was really about speeding up the "getting started" flow and deferring the Android Studio install until it might be needed later on, since iOS-oriented developers wanting to quickly try out Skip might be put off by the large extra application that they're not sure they will ever use.

[tinyhaggis]

That's a fair reason to remove it. It might be good to have both options working in that case.

[pnewell]

For what it’s worth, as someone who has played around with skip in the past and am now revisiting, I was excited to see the requirement to have Android Studio installed was removed. It takes up a ton of space, is a large additional thing to manage, doesn’t “feel native”, and for just getting started and messing around (especially if you are unfamiliar with it) did feel like a burden/pain to me.

[dfabulich]

The more I think about it, the harder (and less advantageous) it sounds to me to avoid Android Studio, at least for local builds.

Even in the ideal case, an Android SDK is a "large additional thing to manage." A basic install with just sdkmanager emulator "build-tools;36.1.0" 'platforms;android-36" is 2GB, and that's before you create one or more emulators (AVDs) and run them. Once you download some system images and create some emulators, it's easy to get an Android SDK at 20GB or more, and that's without Android Studio in the mix.

(When you build a Skip project in Xcode, you need to have already launched an Android emulator or attached an Android device in dev mode, or the build will fail. You can change that default, but if you do, you won't be able to test your app, of course!)

You can do all of this from the command-line, but sdkmanager, avdmanager, and emulator have a bunch of fiddly options… I think you'd really benefit from a GUI, at least to help you manage your emulators (and their system images), and even just to manage SDK versions (multiple versions of build-tools and platforms).

Maybe it'd be fun to vibe code a SwiftUI app to wrap just Android Studio's SDK Manager, AVD manager, emulator, and adb? But, for what? Just to feel native and save ~10% on disk space? (And… are you going to run that on Linux? When Android Studio already works??)

Maybe Skip could try to inspect your Android SDK, use the sdkmanager to install what it needs, define a default emulator, and launch it. But, again, what would Skip do if you have multiple emulators? Should Skip install updated versions of build-tools and platforms? Should it uninstall outdated versions?

For comparison, look at Expo, the React Native framework. They have a huge, dedicated team to make onboarding seamless. They do make it possible to build an app without Android Studio… by offering a build-as-a-service product, Expo Application Services EAS. (Hey, maybe Skip should get into that game!)

Click around here. https://docs.expo.dev/get-started/set-up-your-environment/ If you opt out of "Expo Go" and EAS, you wind up here https://docs.expo.dev/get-started/set-up-your-environment/?mode=development-build&buildEnv=local

The best their team has come up with is a bunch of screenshots of Android Studio!

[marcprux]

We've restored the prerequisite step of installing Android Studio to the getting started guide for the time being.

We still want to remove it in the future, since it isn't intrinsically necessary and it adds a large burden to the process of getting up and running with Skip. But we clearly need to perform more testing of various configurations and the mechanisms for getting a valid Android SDK installed locally without the Android Studio install.