Now git-annex can be used on Android!

Documentation for using git-annex on Android

Android app

First, ensure your Android device is configured to allow installation of the app. Go to Setup -> Security, and enable "Unknown Sources".

Download the git-annex.apk onto your Android device, and open it to install.

autobuilds

A daily build is also available, thanks to Mesar Hameed and the University of Bath CS department.

building it yourself

git-annex can be built from source for Android.

  1. Run standalone/android/buildchroot as root (requires debootstrap). This builds a chroot with an androidbuilder user. The rest of the build will run in this chroot as that user.
  2. Then run standalone/android/install-haskell-packages Note that this will break from time to time as new versions of packages are released, and the patches it applies have to be updated when this happens.
  3. Finally, once the chroot is set up, you can build an Android binary with make android, and make androidapp will build the complete APK.
Does this require 4.x?
Comment by http://josh.easyid.net/ Tue Jun 18 22:05:02 2013
I have not heard of anyone using older than 4.x with success. In particular, several people reported 2.3 doesn't work.
Comment by http://joeyh.name/ Tue Jun 25 17:58:57 2013
Is it safe to upgrade by installing a daily build over an existing version? Will that overwrite any settings?
It is safe to re-install, all your data and settings are stored in /sdcard and will not be touched, even if you delete the app!
Comment by http://joeyh.name/ Fri Jul 5 00:53:00 2013

Things seem broken under the recently released 4.3 release for nexus devices:

Falling back to hardcoded app location; cannot find expected files in /data/app-lib u0_a33@mako:/sdcard/git-annex.home $ git annex webapp CANNOT LINK EXECUTABLE: git-annex invalid R_ARM_COPY relocation against DT_SYMBOLIC shared library libc.so (built. with -Bsymbolic?) 1|u0_a33@mako:/sdcard/git-annex.home $

I'm seeing the same error as the previous comment from Tony on my Nexus 7 after I updated it to the stock (albeit rooted) 4.3 release from Google.
Comment by justjohn Sun Jul 28 16:14:18 2013
@Tony @justjohn: I created a proper bug for this: git-annex broken on Android 4.3
Any chance that older versions of Android will be supported in the future?

Hi, Really enjoy this app for Android! Super simple to use but it would be great if you could fix a folder navigator option when choosing location for device repo, right now it does not work.

Could you also add it to the F-Droid repository?

Comment by http://openlifechallenge.wordpress.com/ Sun Sep 8 09:56:38 2013
Availability in F-Droid would be really neat. I imagine the unusual build requirements would require some work though.
Comment by http://id.clacke.se/ Tue Sep 24 18:36:48 2013

I've setup repositories on both my linux PC & android mini pc and added jabber account on both. They are both at my home network. They detected each other fine. But when it comes to syncing files, there's a message which says "Unable to download files from your other devices" with a button for "add a cloud repository". I don't need to add a cloud repository since both computers are at the same network? Or am I missing something in the architecture of git-annex that even to sync two local computers in the same LAN, annex would still need an external repo? (and if so, why would that be?) I'm not really willing to add an external repository as I intend to add large files and I don't want that they are first uploaded using a slow connection & then re-downloaded. What am I missing?

To make computers on your network directly communicate, they must be connected together using the user interface. This is normally using the local pairing interface. But local pairing does not yet work on Android. The best you can do to instead on your Android device, add the Linux PC as a ssh server. This will let the Android device send/receive files directly with it over the local network.
Comment by http://joeyh.name/ Wed Oct 16 16:05:45 2013

Thanks Joey, I will try this direct mode tonight. I'm following git-annex development since your first days, but I just decided to give it a try so bear with me :)

I also have a VPS and I did try yesterday night to add it as a cloud server to make android & linux sync. It also contained git-annex. When I add it from the PC, it appeared in Android but it was not possible to use it somehow. I had to add a new cloud server with exactly the same settings like th PC, which made things complicated to understand for me as to what happens on the server side when both computers try to setup a repository. (the sync didn't work neither) Maybe I hit a bug here so wanted to share with you. What I expected is that, 1) Add a VPS/ssh/git-annex cloud option from PC. 2) It shall appear in the Android webapp using the XMPP control channel 3) if the password or private key can't be synced over the XMPP due to security concern, then the Android webapp shall just ask for the password to enable it, nothing more.

2nd thing, when I add this VPS/SSH/Git-annex from the PC, if I do not choose any encryption, it is marked as "sync enabled". IF I choose "shared encryption" instead, then sync gets disabled and there's nowhere any comment why the sync is disabled. So, by trial and error, I concluded that the sync is not supported in shared encryption remotes?

3rd thing: The remote cloud can be configured for example as "full backup" or "transfer host". What is not clear is that if I configure it as a "full backup" host, then can Android and PC still use it as a "transfer host" to sync between themselves? What I would expect is that once I add this cloud vps as a "full backup" host, then everybody syncs with it and gets a copy from it if they can't communicate directly themselves. Hope I did not confuse things much, thanks a lot even if you don't find time to write answers.

Comments on this page are closed.