admitting defeat (re: android development environments on guix)

for over a month i’ve spent a weird amount of my free time trying to set up an android development environment (via react native, and then nativescript) on my laptop running the guix linux distribution. i even had a bit of help thanks to some writing about this topic done by franz geffke:

• react native (and android development) on guix [with docker]
• build react native android apps on guix in 5 minutes

unfortunately, i couldn’t take franz’s configuration verbatim and make it work. and beyond that, i also got nerd-sniped trying to make his setups more ergonomic for me. (i am slightly allergic to having to remember to manually open 2-5 shells, source a bunch of stuff, and then start a bunch of processes manually.)

on my own, i went down some rabbit holes, asked some questions in the #nonguix channel on libera, and attempted setting up my own bespoke environments via guix fhs containers, docker, and even a qemu virtual machine. the closest working environment was the qemu machine. that one at least did not require a bunch of harnessing to appease guix’s declarative, immutable nature. if even allowed me to connect to my physical android device without too much ritual. i abandoned that strategy, though, because it became a guix-related time-sink to learn how to set up a non-virtio filesystem so i could continue to run a code editor, etc. on my irl, non-virtual host machine.

could i get any of these strategies to work? with enough time, i think yes. but the personal-enjoyment accounting is already starting to be fucked up. this blog post is me surrendering and trying to not feel horrible about all of the time i have just admitted to losing.

no hate directed at guix here. i appreciate it the more i learn it. but i’m bummed out i couldn’t get the guix container with fhs emulation working with my physical android device. the core of the issue was that the adb server required for communication with a physical android device could not be run from within the container no matter what environment shit i told the container it could have access to. and running adb on the host didn’t “just work” with the processes inside of the container. with enough time, maybe i could get there. but at this point, i also just don’t know enough about the android sdk tooling to really be effective at creating the developer-harness.