Only build for ARM by default?

[beeware]

Only build for ARM by default?

[freakboy3742]

AIUI, the benefit is speed. ARM on x86 requires CPU-level emulation, which is possible, but not as fast as native x86. Given that the vast majority of Android developers will also be x86 users on the desktop, I wouldn't want to make x86 development unworkably slow (or unreliable) for the sake of making our builds marginally faster.

I think there is also a historical use case for x86/x86_64 builds for Intel Atom hardware, but don't think either of the users of those devices are also Briefcase users 😝

See also beeware/briefcase#808 for a request for configuring the ABIs that are built by default.

[rmartin16]

Given that the vast majority of Android developers will also be x86 users on the desktop, I wouldn't want to make x86 development unworkably slow (or unreliable) for the sake of making our builds marginally faster.

In the Android PR I linked, they do call out speed considerations in that they explicitly optimized the system images to run everything except for the ARM binaries using native x86. So, while I haven't really stressed it, the slowdown should not be nearly as remarkable as full ARM emulation is. And furthermore, if none of the packages contain binaries, then nothing should be emulated.

Additionally, there is also the space consideration I didn't mention; I've noticed that when users hit the space limits, removing x86 can be a solution.

[mhsmith]

That page only mentions Android 11, while our minimum is currently Android 6. So unless they've backported this feature, we won't be able to rely on it yet.

For the space consideration, we could remove armeabi-v7a by default, as long as there's an easy way to put it back (beeware/briefcase#808).