Android Emulator Windows Development (Simplified)

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 2019: 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.

  • CMake: Install and ensure it's added to your PATH.

  • Python3: Install and ensuret it's add 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 visualstudio2019community visualstudio2019buildtools visualstudio2019-workload-python curl visualstudio2019-workload-nativedesktop visualstudio2019-workload-vctools visualstudio2022-workload-python git python3 cmake

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:

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

Getting the Source Code

  1. 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.

  2. Initialize Repo:

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

  3. Download Code:

    repo sync -j 8

Building the Emulator

  1. Build:

    cd external\qemu && android\rebuild

  2. 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.