This is a guide on how to build a signed AndroidAPS APK from a terminal (headless) without Android Studio.
A example use case for this would be building AAPS via SSH from your phone if you need a new apk for whatever reason while you have no physical access to your PC.

Note: This Guide is a draft that aims to be integrated into the AAPS Wiki once finished!

Option 1: Prepare Linux / WSL

This will build AndroidAPS with either your Linux system or with the Windows Subsystem for Linux (WSL)

Notes:

• Installing WSL via this command requires Windows 10 version 2004 (build 19041) or higher or Windows 11.
• If your PC is already running Linux you can skip installing WSL.
• The Guide assumes you are using the latest Ubuntu LTS. Some commands may be different if you are using a different distribution.

Install WSL (if not already installed)

Run the following command in PowerShell to install WSL:

wsl --install

Once it is installed it will ask you to type in a username and password. After that it will load directly into the WSL shell.

If you see a help text after typing that command, you need to install a linux distribution for WSL. For that run:

wsl --install -d Ubuntu

If you see a PowerShell prompt again after the installation, you can start WSL by running:

ubuntu

Install package manager dependecies

Install these packages from your package manager

sudo apt install wget git openjdk-8-jre-headless openjdk-11-jre-headless zip unzip zipalign gradle

Get other dependecies

Run these commands to get the Android command line tools

wget https://dl.google.com/android/repository/commandlinetools-linux-6200805_latest.zip
mkdir android-sdk
unzip commandlinetools-linux-6200805_latest.zip -d $HOME/android-sdk

Setup Enviromental Variables

Add this to your .bashrc or to the equivalent file for your shell.

export ANDROID_HOME="$HOME/android-sdk"
if [ -n "$ANDROID_HOME" ] ; then
  PATH="$ANDROID_HOME/emulator:$ANDROID_HOME/tools:$ANDROID_HOME/tools/bin:$ANDROID_HOME/platform-tools:$PATH"
fi

Restart your Terminal/Shell

Setup SDK

Run these commands to install the SDK and build tools

sdkmanager --sdk_root=${ANDROID_HOME} "tools"
sdkmanager --update
sdkmanager "build-tools;28.0.3" "platform-tools" "platforms;android-28" "tools"
sdkmanager --licenses

Option 2: Prepare (Windows) PowerShell

tbd

Build and sign

Clone AAPS git

git clone https://github.com/nightscout/androidaps.git
cd androidaps

Build

Note: Unlike in Android Studio, this will always build both the main apk and the wear apk.

./gradlew :app:assembleFullRelease

The .apk’s can be found in:

• Main app: androidaps/app/build/outputs/apk/full/release/app-full-release-unsigned.apk
• Wear app: androidaps/wear/build/outputs/apk/full/release/wear-full-release-unsigned.apk

Sign

Create a single keystore file if not done already

Give it a password, your Name and leave everything else empty. Confirm by typing “yes”.

keytool -genkey -v -keystore ~/my-aaps-key.jks -keyalg RSA -keysize 2048 -validity 10000 -alias aaps1

Align the apk’s and sign them

cd app/build/outputs/apk/full/release/
# align
zipalign -v -p 4 app-full-release-unsigned.apk app-full-release-unsigned-aligned.apk
# sign
apksigner sign --ks ~/my-aaps-key.jks --out app-full-release-signed.apk app-full-release-unsigned-aligned.apk
# (optional) verify successful signing
apksigner verify --verbose app-full-release-signed.apk

(Optional) Repeat align and sign for wear

cd wear/build/outputs/apk/full/release/
# align
zipalign -v -p 4 wear-full-release-unsigned.apk wear-full-release-unsigned-aligned.apk
# sign
apksigner sign --ks ~/my-aaps-key.jks --out wear-full-release-signed.apk wear-full-release-unsigned-aligned.apk
# (optional) verify successful signing
apksigner verify --verbose wear-full-release-signed.apk

Install app

Copy the apk to your phone via your preferred way and install it.

Tips for WSL:

• run explorer.exe . to open the Windows Explorer in the current directory
• run code <file> to open a file in Visual Studio Code
• run code . to open the current directory in Visual Studio Code