guardianproject
x86 support
Hello!
Some "Linux for Android" support x86 processor architecture. Technically Lildebi works with x86, but lildebi wizzard have only armhf and armel support (and doesn't work with Intel processors)
Fervi
It would be nice to have x86 support. That would require two changes:
- also including an x86 version of cdebootstrap (only armel is included)
- also building busybox for x86
I don't have any x86 Android devices, so I'm not going to take this on. But I'd happily accept patches from someone who does.
@eighthave : we should add some prompt like unsupported arch for intel mobiles. what do you think?
I think that the app store should handle that, it shouldn't give x86 devices the option of installing Lil' Debi on x86. FDroid is working on support for that.
I've had some success building busybox for x86 in the past (though my recent attempt seems to have failed; I'm trying to dig up the old git clone), and FDroid definitely supports differently-arched packages now (though I've also had luck just adding an x86 image build option to a lildebi build and running the app through the built-in libhoudini arm translation).
adding an x86 version of cdebootstrap should be trivial, as well as adding x86 and x86_64 options for the image build.
I'm using a Samsung dual atom netbook for android at the moment, which has no official android build, but is running the latest stable android-x86 (4.4-r1). The only issue I had last night was building busybox with the NDK for x86, but there are plenty of other people attempting and succeeding at building it, so Ill try to merge their configs with the lildebi busybox config and see what I can come up with.
LilDebi needs it's custom built version of busybox because of issues with stericson's version, correct? I'm only asking if its a possibility to check for an already installed busybox and use those tools instead of building and packaging into app_bin, but I seem to remember there was an issue with one (or a few) of the applets.
It'll probably be easiest to manage an x86 build by having a separate APK.
About the embedded busybox, the point of LilDebi is to make a one-click Debian install. Relying on stericson's busybox breaks that in a big way. Any version of busybox should be pretty easy to build on x86, but maybe not android-x86.
I'm not sure, but it's looks like a busybox from Debian is compatibile with BB for Android We can always get BB from Debian Noroot (cuntbuntu ?)
I've seen a few blog posts and a github or two with tweaks needed to the CFLAGS and the applets that will build using the NDK on x86 without much effort. I'll compare them to the list of applets lildebi is currently building on arm so everything it needs gets built. I've edited the busybox Makefile in the lildebi source and had it build before, but I haven't had a chance to diff the changes from that git clone yet; holidays and all.