Notes from THP's EuroPython 2012 Talk]

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These notes were compiled based on the ​Youtube video of ​THP's talk from EuroPython 2012 called ​Developing Android Apps completely in Python.

My notes are prefixed with MartinK: and written in italic.

PySide @ Android

Intro

Based on 3 projects:

• Python4Android - takes care of the Python interpreter
• Necessitas - provides Qt libraries for Android
• PySide - provides Python bindings for Qt

It should be possible to also use PyQt in place of PySide but THP was used to PySide so he used that.

MartiK: As PySide currently (January 2013) doesn't support Qt 5 at all but PyQt does, using PyQt might be needed for using Qt 5 on Android devices.

First build Python4Android for you host system - it is used for compiling PySide (you have to cross-compile PySide for Android).

Then there is a small C++ project called ​!PySide Launcher - it invokes the Python interpreter from a C++ application. Using it you can use the Necessitas IDE and deploy directly to the device.

The PySide launcher initializes the interpreter, passes it the command-line arguments and runs the main.py file from a folder on the Android sdcard folder.

The result looks from outside like a C++ application, but what it really does is that it calls the Python interpreter, the Python interpreter then calls PySide and PySide calls the Qt APIs so you can have a Qt application.

Necessitas SDK

The Necessitas SDK can be downloaded from ​here and takes up about 3.5 GB. It contains Android NDK, Android SDK, Qt Creator, Qt compiled for desktop, Qt compiled for Android - basically all in one package.