An interface for accessing Anki Desktop's Rust backend inside AnkiDroid. This allows AnkiDroid to re-use the computer version's business logic and webpages, instead of having to reimplement them.
This is a separate repo that gets published to a library that AnkiDroid consumes, so that AnkiDroid development is possible without a Rust toolchain installed.
We assume you already have Android Studio, and are able to build the AnkiDroid project already.
The repos Anki-Android and Anki-Android-Backend should be cloned inside the
same folder. Furthermore, Anki-Android-Backend should not be renamed, as this
name is hard-coded in AnkiDroid gradle files. Unless stated otherwise, all
commands below are supposed to be executed in the current repo.
git submodule update --init
Install Xcode/Visual Studio if on macOS/Windows.
Install rustup from https://rustup.rs/
Anki can be built with Ninja or N2. N2 gives better status output and may be installed like so:
./anki/tools/install-n2
On Windows:
bash anki/tools/install-n2
Note: n2 receives occasional mandatory updates. If you see build errors, you may need to re-run this command and re-try the build
In Android Studio, choose the Tools>SDK Manager menu option.
- In SDK tools, enable "show package details"
- Choose NDK version 27.0.12077973
- After downloading, you may need to restart Android Studio to get it to synchronize gradle.
Install msys2 into the default folder location.
After installation completes, run msys2, and run the following command:
pacman -S git rsync
When following the build steps below, make sure msys is on the path:
set PATH=%PATH%;c:\msys64\usr\bin
Two main files need to be built:
- The main .aar file, which contains the backend Kotlin code, web assets, and Anki backend code compiled for Android.
- A .jar that contains the backend code compiled for the host platform, for use with Robolectric unit tests.
You should do the first build with the provided shell .sh/.bat file, as it will take care of downloading the target architecture library as well. You'll need to tell the script to use the Java libraries and NDK downloaded by Android Studio, eg on Linux:
export ANDROID_SDK_ROOT=$HOME/Android/Sdk
export ANDROID_NDK_HOME=$HOME/Android/Sdk/ndk/27.0.12077973
Or macOS:
export ANDROID_SDK_ROOT=$HOME/Library/Android/sdk
export ANDROID_NDK_HOME=$HOME/Library/Android/sdk/ndk/27.0.12077973
Or Windows using Powershell:
$env:ANDROID_NDK_HOME="$env:ANDROID_SDK_ROOT\ndk\27.0.12077973"
If you don't have Java installed, you may be able to use the version bundled with Android Studio. Eg on macOS:
export JAVA_HOME="/Applications/Android Studio.app/Contents/jre/Contents/Home"
or Windows:
set JAVA_HOME=C:\Program Files\Android\Android Studio\jre
Now build with ./build.sh or build.bat.
After you've confirmed building works, you may want to build again with the env var RELEASE=1 defined, to build a faster version.
Now open the AnkiDroid project in AndroidStudio. To tell gradle to load the
compiled .aar and .jar files from disk, edit local.properties
in the AnkiDroid repo, and add the following line:
local_backend=true
Check Anki-AndroidBackend/gradle.properties's BACKEND_VERSION and
Anki-Android/build.gradle's ext.ankidroid_backend_version. Both variables
should have the same value. If it is not the case, you must edit Anki-Android's
one.
After making the change, you should be able to build and run the project on an x86_64 emulator/device (arm64 on M1 Macs), and run unit tests.
Only the current platform is built by default. In CI, the .aar and .jar files are built for multiple platforms, so one release library can be used on a variety of devices. See [.github/workflows] for how this is done.
In this section, we'll consider that you want to test AnkiDroid with the version
of Anki at commit $COMMIT_IDENTIFIER from the repository some_repo.
Most of the time $SOME_REPO will simply be origin, that is, ankitects
official repository, and COMMIT_IDENTIFIER could be replaced by the tag of the
latest stable release. You can find the latest tag by running git tag|sort -V|tail -n1 in the anki directory.
- run
cd ankito change into the anki submodule directory, - run
git fetch $SOME_REPOto ensure you obtain the latest change from this repo. - run
git checkout $COMMIT_IDENTIFIER --recurse-submodulesto obtain the version of the code at this particular commit.
Let's now consider that you want to release a new version of the back-end.
- Find the latest stable version of Anki. You can find the latest tag by
running
git tag|sort -V|tail -n1in theankidirectory. Let's call it version $ANKI_VERSION. - Ensure you are testing and building the back-end against this version (see preceding section to learn how to do it).
- In
Anki-Android-Backend/gradle.propertiesyou will need to updateVERSION_NAME. Its value is of the form$BACKEND_VERSION-$ANKI_VERSION.$ANKI_VERSIONshould be as defined above.$BACKEND_VERSIONshould be incremented compared to the last release. - Run the Github workflow
Build release (from macOS)manually with a string argument (I typically useshipit, but any string will work) - this will trigger a full release build ready for upload to maven. - Check the workflow logs for the link to Maven Central where if you have a Maven Central user with permissions (like David A and Mike H - ask if you want permission) you may "close" the repository" then after a short wait "release" the repository.
- Head over to the main
Anki-Androidrepository and update theAnkiDroid/build.gradlefile there to adopt the new backend version once it shows up in https://repo1.maven.org/maven2/io/github/david-allison/anki-android-backend/
See ARCHITECTURE.md
GPL-3.0 License
AGPL-3.0 Licence (anki submodule)
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