Android Emulator Windows Development

This guide helps you set up the Android Emulator on Windows for development. You can use your own computer or Google Compute Engine (GCE).

Software Requirements

Visual Studio 2022: Install the Community edition with specific components (C++ build tools, ATL, MFC, Windows 10 SDK).
Git: Install and ensure it's added to your PATH.

Chocolatey (Optional): Install all dependencies using the provided command if you have Chocolatey.

To install everything with chocolatey:

@"%SystemRoot%\System32\WindowsPowerShell\v1.0\powershell.exe" -NoProfile -InputFormat None -ExecutionPolicy Bypass -Command " [System.Net.ServicePointManager]::SecurityProtocol = 3072; iex ((New-Object System.Net.WebClient).DownloadString('https://chocolatey.org/install.ps1'))" && SET "PATH=%PATH%;%ALLUSERSPROFILE%\chocolatey\bin"

choco install -y visualstudio2022community visualstudio2022buildtools visualstudio2022-workload-python visualstudio2022-workload-nativedesktop visualstudio2022-workload-vctools git curl

Run Visual Studio once to accept the license. Ensure your user account has the “SeCreateSymbolicLinkPrivilege.” Open terminals with administrator privileges for easier setup.

Configure git

You will need to setup your name and make sure you enable symlinks. Repo will do its best to work without symlinks enabled, but we have not tested this. Make sure you have the following settings set:

git config --system core.autocrlf false
git config --global core.autocrlf false
git config --system core.symlinks true
git config --global core.symlinks true
git config --global user.name "I just copy pasted this without looking"
git config --global user.email wrong-do-it-again@badrobot.com

Getting the Source Code

Install Repo:

From an elevated visual studio command prompt execute:

mkdir %USERPROFILE%\bin && cd %USERPROFILE%\bin && curl -o repo http://storage.googleapis.com/git-repo-downloads/repo && echo @call python %~dp0repo %* > %USERPROFILE%\bin\repo.cmd

Make sure to add %USERPROFILE%\bin to the PATH, otherwise you will not be able to use repo.

Initialize Repo:

cd \ && mkdir emu-master-dev && cd emu-master-dev
repo init -u https://android.googlesource.com/platform/manifest -b emu-master-dev

Download Code:
```
repo sync
```

Building the Emulator

Build:
```
cd external\qemu && android\rebuild
```
List Available Virtual Devices:
```
\objs\emulator -list-avds
```

Additional Notes

Incremental Builds:
```
ninja -C objs
```
Configuring the build:
You can get additional information on how to configure the build by running:
```
android\rebuild --help
```
For example android\rebuild --task CTest will run all the unit tests
Running unit tests:
We use ctest to run unit tests. You can run them in the objs directory
```
cd objs; ctest -j 10
```

Downloading Pre-built Emulators

You can obtain the latest build of the emulator from our build servers. Look for the sdk-repo-{architecture}-emulator-{buildid}.zip artifact.

Sending patches

Here you can find details on submitting patches.