syncthing-android/README.md

syncthing-android

A wrapper of Syncthing for Android.

Status: "Maintenance mode" - Co-maintainers welcome

tl;dr: The app is still kept up to date, and contributions are still welcome - however even reviews for those can take a long time. Co-maintainers are very welcome - get in touch if you are interested.

No-one is dedicating significant time into development or reviews. It's still kept up to date with Syncthing, Android and dependencies under the wider Syncthing project umbrella on a best effort basis. Contributions are reviewed, however available time for that is scarce so it will take a while. And obviously it depends both on the size/clarity of the change and (admittedly subjective) relevance of it - chance of successful and speedier reviews is higher if your change is targeted and small.

No feature request taken (feature contributions case-by-case)

Handling feature requests use up the little time that is present to keep the app up-to-date, and there is no feature development happening. So unless you are opening a feature request to discuss your own contribution before jumping into coding, the request will be closed directly with some template answer pointing at this section.

Translations

The project is translated on Hosted Weblate.

Dev

Language codes are usually mapped correctly by Weblate itself. The supported set is different between Google Play and Android apps. The latter can be deduced by what the Android core framework itself supports. New languages need to be added in the repository first, then appear automatically in Weblate.

Building

These dependencies and instructions are necessary for building from the command line. If you build using Docker or Android Studio, you don't need to set up and follow them separately.

Dependencies

1. Android SDK and NDK

   1. Download SDK command line tools from https://developer.android.com/studio#command-line-tools-only.

   2. Unpack the downloaded archive to an empty folder. This path is going to become your ANDROID_HOME folder.

   3. Inside the unpacked cmdline-tools folder, create yet another folder called latest, then move everything else inside it, so that the final folder hierarchy looks as follows.

      cmdline-tools/latest/bin
      cmdline-tools/latest/lib
      cmdline-tools/latest/source.properties
      cmdline-tools/latest/NOTICE.txt
      

   4. Navigate inside cmdline-tools/latest/bin, then execute

      ./sdkmanager "platform-tools" "build-tools;<version>" "platforms;android-<version>" "extras;android;m2repository" "ndk;<version>"
      

      The required tools and NDK will be downloaded automatically.

      NOTE: You should check Dockerfile for the specific version numbers to insert in the command above.

2. Go (see https://docs.syncthing.net/dev/building#prerequisites for the required version)
3. Java version 11 (if not present in $PATH, you might need to set $JAVA_HOME accordingly)
4. Python version 3

Build instructions

1. Clone the project with

   git clone https://github.com/syncthing/syncthing-android.git --recursive
   

   Alternatively, if already present on the disk, run

   git submodule init && git submodule update
   

   in the project folder.
2. Make sure that the ANDROID_HOME environment variable is set to the path containing the Android SDK (see Dependecies).
3. Navigate inside syncthing-android, then build the APK file with

   ./gradlew buildNative
   ./gradlew assembleDebug
   

4. Once completed, app-debug.apk will be present inside app/build/outputs/apk/debug.

NOTE: On Windows, you must use the Command Prompt (and not PowerShell) to compile. When doing so, in the commands replace all forward slashes / with backslashes \.

License

The project is licensed under the MPLv2.