Download dependencies

download.sh will take care of installing the Android SDK, NDK and downloading the sources.

If you're running on Debian/Ubuntu or RHEL/Fedora it will also install the necessary dependencies for you.

./download.sh

If you already have the Android SDK installed you can symlink android-sdk-linux to your SDK root before running the script, it will still install the necessary SDK packages.

A matching NDK version inside the SDK will be picked up automatically or downloaded/installed otherwise.

Patching

./patch.sh

Run patch.sh to apply the custom patches to the dependencies. These patches are located in the patches folder.

Note running patch.sh resets the dependencies to a clean state.

Build

./build.sh

Run build.sh with --clean to clean the build directories before building.

This builds for all architectures (armeabi-v7a arm64-v8a x86 x86_64) by default.

If you want to build only for a specific arch, build the native part like this:

./build.sh --arch arm64 mpv
./build.sh --arch x86_64 mpv

You also need to tell gradle to only build said architectures. See Specify ABIs for more information

android {
  ...
  defaultConfig {
    ...
    ndk {
      abiFilters += listOf("x86_64", "arm64-v8a")
    }
  }
}

Finally you can build the AAR:

./build.sh -n

Developing

Getting logs

adb logcat # get all logs, useful when drivers/vendor libs output to logcat
adb logcat -s "mpv" # get only mpv logs

Rebuilding a single component

If you've made changes to a single component (e.g. ffmpeg or mpv) and want a new build you can of course just run ./build.sh but it's also possible to just build a single component like this:

./build.sh -n ffmpeg
# optional: add --clean to build from a clean state

Note this will build the component for all architectures, specify --arch to build for a single arch.

Afterwards, build mpv-android:

./build.sh -n

Using Android Studio

You can use Android Studio to develop the Java part of the codebase. Before using it, make sure to build the project at least once by following the steps in the Build section.

You should point Android Studio to existing SDK installation at mpv-android/buildscripts/sdk/android-sdk-linux. Then click "Open an existing Android Studio project" and select mpv-android.

If Android Studio complains about project sync failing (Error:Exception thrown while executing model rule: NdkComponentModelPlugin.Rules#createNativeBuildModel), go to "File -> Project Structure -> SDK Location" and set "Android NDK Location" to mpv-android/buildscripts/sdk/android-ndk-rVERSION.

Note that if you build from Android Studio only the Java part will be built. If you make any changes to libraries (ffmpeg, mpv, ...) or mpv-android native code (app/src/main/jni/*), first rebuild native code with:

./build.sh -n

then build the project from Android Studio.

Also, debugging native code does not work from within the studio at the moment, you will have to use gdb for that.

Debugging native code with gdb

You first need to rebuild mpv-android with gdbserver support:

NDK_DEBUG=1 ./build.sh -n
adb install -r ../app/build/outputs/apk/debug/app-debug.apk

After that, ndk-gdb can be used to debug the app:

cd mpv-android/app/src/main/
../../../buildscripts/sdk/android-ndk-r*/ndk-gdb --launch

Credits, notes, etc

These build scripts were created by @sfan5 and modified by @jarnedemeulemeester.