Building Android on self-hosted Linux GitHub Actions runners

Jul 7, 2021

Note that this guide was last updated on 07/07/21.

Last year, I had some trouble setting up Android builds on self-hosted GitHub Actions runners for smart-brocolli. This post serves to document this process.

1. Provision a Linux VM. I will be using Ubuntu 20.04 on Azure.
2. Install Flutter SDK.
   https://flutter.dev/docs/get-started/install/linux#install-flutter-manually
3. Add flutter to $PATH and run $ flutter doctor.
4. Download Android command-line tools.
   https://developer.android.com/studio#command-tools
5. Extract tools:

   $ sudo apt install unzip && unzip commandlinetools-linux-*.zip
   

6. Set up Android directory:

   $ mkdir android-sdk && mkdir android-sdk/cmdline-tools && \
    mv cmdline-tools/ android-sdk/cmdline-tools/latest
   

7. Add android-sdk/cmdline-tools/latest/bin/ to $PATH, set $ANDROID_HOME.
   e.g.

   export ANDROID_HOME=`pwd`/android-sdk
   export PATH="$PATH:`pwd`/flutter/bin:`pwd`/android-sdk/cmdline-tools/latest/bin"
   

8. Install Java:

   $ sudo apt install openjdk-8-jdk
   

9. Install Platform SDK and build-tools using sdkmanager, e.g.:

   $ sdkmanager --install "platforms;android-30"
   $ sdkmanager --install "build-tools;30.0.2"
   

10. Review licenses:

    $ flutter doctor --android-licenses
    

11. Run $ flutter doctor again.
    Ensure that a tick is given for Android Toolchain.
12. Finally, add an appropriate GitHub Actions workflow.