AndroVM moving to a commercial product

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Dear all,

this is a great day for AndroVM. I’m happy to announce that the AndroVM project becomes a fully supported commercial product, backed by Genymobile.

To underline this change, the project name changes (who said again ? :-) ) from AndroVM to Genymotion.

Let me now describe what will be Genymotion. This product is aimed at replacing the Android Emulator from Google not only for Android developers but also for people making Android apps demonstrations (sales, marketing people).

Genymotion is being developed towards three directions :

  • Performance : the fastest Android emulator mainly thanks to x86 support and Hardware OpenGL (improved from what’s available in the stock emulator)
  • Simplicity : we want an easy to install, easy to use product, hiding the technological complexity behind the scene (VirtualBox, Hardware OpenGL, …)
  • Emulation completeness : we want most sensors to be emulated with easy-tu-use widgets, Voice call emulation, NFC, Bluetooth, and more…

The first beta version of Genymotion will be available in about one month – launched at the Droidcon in Paris, that’s one more good reason to attend if needed :-)

Some of you might fear that the project goes closed source and/or are forced to pay in order to use Genymotion. I want to reassure you :

  • Everything open source today will stay open source and will even expand : our strategy is that all Genymotion “basic functions” are open source (VirtualBox support, Different Android version support) and we aimed the open source version of Genymotion to go beyond the needs of the commercial version, especially in terms of Virtualization product support by supporting virtualization environments like Xen or VMWare. If you would like to participate in this development, feel free to contact me.
  • Genymotion will have a free version, with many many advanced functions (sensors emulation, GPS, multi-touch support, …) which will should make your development/testing/demonstration work easier

There will obviously be paying versions of the product, mainly for large companies needing collaboration on Genymotion.

The genymotion.com web site is up, you can visit it and register your email address to be informed as soon as the product is released.

Feel free to comment/ask questions on this change.

Best regards,

Dan.

Big announcement to come

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Hi all,

there’s some big announcement to come about the AndroVM project. I cannot tell more for the moment because things will be disclosed at the “Demo Night/Mixer” during the Google I/O.

If you’re at the Google I/O this week or live near San Francisco, you can join this meetup ; this will also be a great way to meet Sam (part of the androVM development team) and Cedric (Genymobile CEO).

Following this, I’ll happily share details here and on the androvm mailing list.

Best regards,

Dan.

Talkback on AndroVM

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Hi,

just a quick note if you need to use the ‘Talkback’ app on AndroVM. The apk shipped with the “*-gapps-houdini-flash” images will crash if you enable the Talkback option in the Android accessibilty settings. To solve this problem, you have to update the Talkback app from Google Play.

To make things easier, future releases will include the correct apk.

Thanks Simon for pointing out this problem.

Dan.

AndroVM 20130222 release

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I’m proud to annonce that the 2013022 release of AndroVM is now available. If you follow the androVM google group, you probably know most of the features that I’ll announce in this post and you also probably got a chance to test them in intermediate releases (not announced on this blog).

Here’s the new features list (compared to the 20121119 release) :

  • Android version is now 4.1.1_r6.1
  • VirtualBox shared folders support : now all VirtualBox shared folders declared as “auto-mount” in the VM settings are mounted in the /sdcard/shared/ directory
  • [Software OpenGL] Seamless mouse integration is now supported in Software OpenGL (inside the VirtualBox window)
  • [Hardware OpenGL] The TCP connexion used for hardware OpenGL is now initiated by the host (the VM acts as the server) ; this should be more “firewall friendly” and allows to have multiple AndroVM running with Hardware OpenGL
  • The AndroVMplayer has now a graphical frontend which lets you choose the resolution and DPI as well as the VM you want to start (if you use VirtualBox – which is advised for AndroVM because we have a tighter integration with it).

Known bugs (same as 20121119 release) :

  • Hardware OpenGL/Intel HD/Windows : On most Intel HD drivers running Windows, the AndroVMplayer might crash (in the driver DLL) when starting Android ; you may have to restart AndroVMplayer an important number of times before it suceeds
  • Hardware OpenGL/WebView : On some GPUs (mostly NVidia ?), the browser and all apps which use the WebView component might show scrambled HTML content

AndroVMplayer now support window resizing, as well as fullscreen mode ; to use AndroVMplayer in fullscreen mode, you have to :

  • select “manual resolution” and tick the “fullscreen” box
  • press F11 (Ctrl+F11 on Mac) to switch to fullscreen when the player window has appeared

When starting the virtual machine, AndroVMplayer now check different things :

  • If your AndroVM virtual machine doesn’t have the “hardware OpenGL” option enabled, it can enable it for you before starting the VM.
  • If your AndroVM virtual machine first network adapter is not configured, it can configure it for you (as well as create the host-only network for you).

To summarize that, with this new AndroVMplayer, to use OpenGL hardware you just have to :

  • Import the AndroVM ova in VirtualBox
  • Start AndroVMplayer, choose your resolution and the virtual machine you’ve just imported
  • Click “Run” and it should work

You can still use AndroVMplayer with non-VirtualBox systems (e.g VMWare) but, obviously, you won’t benefit from automatic VirtualBox configuration and VM start/stop ; in this case, you have to choose ‘none’ as the VM name and directly type the IP address of your virtual machine.

Please note that, due to the change in communication, old AndroVMplayer won’t work with 20130222 OVAs and old OVAs won’t work with 20130222 AndroVMplayer.

You will find the download links on the download page.

Feel free to send working/non-working reports to the androVM google group.

Dan.

NB: I’ve updated the Documentation page to include the new features of this release.

Open-sourcing AndroVM

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Hi,

at least, the AndroVM source code is now available.

To get it you need the repo tool from source.android.com along with other prerequesites which are listed here.

The platform manifest git used by repo is : http://github.com/androvm/platform_manifest.git

For the moment, the only working branch is androVM-4.1.1_r6.1

Thus, to initialize your AndroVM repo you should do : repo init -u https://github.com/androvm/platform_manifest.git -b androVM-4.1.1_r6.1

If you have any patches you’d like to submit, please send them to the AndroVM Google group.

Happy coding

Dan.

PS: Comments disabled, should you have any questions, please use the AndroVM Google group.

AndroVM 20121119 release

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Hi all,

here’s the 20121119 release of both the OVAs and the AndroVMplayer tool.

Compared with the 20121106 release, many things have been fixed :

  • There was a bug in the WiFi emulation which could cause non-working Internet and at least caused a “low signal” WiFi 
  • One can now install purchased application from Google Play 
  • su has been updated and the SuperUser app added ; now, you can su from apps
  • Function keys were not working when using Hardware OpenGL – it has been improved
  • Audio input support has been improved and should now work with most (all ?) apps
  • New option for Hardware OpenGL : “Disable OpenGL rendering in the UI” (this was enabled by default in the 20121111, thus the performance impact) – with this option, the rendering in the UI is not done in OpenGL, OpenGL being only used with apps
  • New options for Hardware OpenGL : “Force Host IP” – This option can be used to force the IP address of the host. By default, the host IP address is automatically deduced for the VM eth0 IP address and replacing the last byte by a “1″ (for example, if it’s 192.168.56.101, the IP address used for OpenGL Hardware is 192.168.56.1). But you can have a different configuration and need to use a different IP address.
  • Busybox is now included
  • ARM app compatibility has been improved : there’s now a ro.product.cpu.abi3 set to armeabi which will cause the system to use armeabi libs as well as the x86 and armeabi-v7a libs
  • Flash support : The “-gapps-houdini-flash” VMs now contain the needed libraries to run Flash ; be careful, it only works with Hardware OpenGL
  • New “superuser bypass” option in the AndroVM configuration tool : when enabled, the Superuser app is bypassed and access is always granted
  • OpenGL software fallback : if after 10 tries (about 50 seconds), the VM cannot connect to AndroVMplayer it automatically switches to Software OpenGL so that you can access your options in the AdndroVM configuration tool
Known bugs :
  • Hardware OpenGL/Intel HD/Windows : On most Intel HD drivers running Windows, the AndroVMplayer might crash (in the driver DLL) when starting Android ; you may have to restart AndroVMplayer an important number of times before it suceeds
  • Hardware OpenGL/WebView : On some GPUs (mostly NVidia ?), the browser and all apps which use the WebView component might show scrambled HTML content
NB : This is the list of fixes/improvements since the last “official relase” (20121106) on this web site (you may have used intermediate releases poste on the google group).
NB2 : I’ve closed comments on most of the blog posts on the web site. If you have any query, problems, or anything to say about AndroVM please use the dedicated google group.
You can find download links on the download page.
Dan.

AndroVM – Configuration Tutorial

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Here is a small tutorial to help you setting-up AndroVM with hardware accelerated OpenGL rendering, using VirtualBox.
I will assume that you already have VirtualBox installed and working.

Network Adapter

To run with hardware acceleration, as for using the ADB with AndroVM, you’ll need an “Host Only” network adapter. To create one, open VirtualBox, get to the “File” menu, “Preferences…”, “Network”.

Step 1 - VBox Network Preferences

Don’t forget to enable DHCP Server for this network adapter.
Step 2 – Host Only Adapter Configuration

Importing VM

Now, you can import the VM into VirtualBox. Just double-click on the OVA file, or use “File” menu, “Import Appliance”.
It can be a good idea to rename the VM into something more friendly.

Step 3 - Importing OVA

Setting-up VM

Step 4 - VM Parameters

By default, AndroVM has its first network adapter set to disable. Go to the VM network settings and set it to “Host Only Adapter”

Step 5 - Network Adapter 1

Then, start the VM. Now, you’ve got a fully functional software-rendered AndroVM. Now, open the AndroVM Config app, and check the box to enable hardware OpenGL.

Step 6 - AndroVM Config

Note that you might see the VM IP on the top off the app. This is the Management IP. You can adb connect this IP.
If there’s no IP address, then you won’t be able to use hardware OpenGL. Verify your host-only adapter configuration.
Click on the “Save” button, The VM will restart.

Spet 7 - VM Reboot

The VM will stay in that state. Now it’s time to run the AndroVMplayer.

AndroVMplayer

The AndroVMplayer is a software used to display the VM content and manage its events. It won’t work if the VM is not running !
Open a command line interpreter, get to the AndroVMplayer directory, and type :
AndroVMplayer [width] [height] [density]

Step 8 - AndroVMplayer

Wait a few seconds, and the Android boot animation will appear in the AndroVMplayer.

Typical problems

Step 8: the AndroVMplayer blocks on “waiting for connection from VM”

  • If the VM shows a Management IP, try to connect to the VM through adb. If it doesn’t work, then turn off your firewall
  • If the VM doesn’t show a Management IP, the your network adapter is not well configured

The VM displays “init: untracked pid xxxx”

  • It means that the VM is waiting for the AndroVMplayer. Just launch it !

AndroVM 20121106 release

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Hi all,

I’m pleased to announce a very important release for AndroVM, with many features and improvements that have been awaited for some time.

Here’s the feature list :

  • Hardware OpenGL is now fully supported on all AndroVM versions (t, p and tp) as well as on the three OS targets (Windows, Linux, Mac OS). To use it, you have to enable “Hardware OpenGL” in the “AndroVM setting” app and use the “AndroVM player” app on your host
  • ARM support (aka libhoudini) has been improved by getting ICS libs and also by adding support for “ARM native activity”, something which was missing and prevented some ARM apps to run on AndroVM with libhoudini support
  • Experimental support for VMWare : The AndroVM settings were previously only stored in the VirtualBox guest properties ; now, when AndroVM runs on non-VirtualBox virtual machine, it stores its settings in /data/.AndroVM_XXXX files. Setting resolution on VMWare is partially supported as I didn’t look yet how to make VMWare accept non-standard resolution, but you can activate “OpenGL Hardware” support on VMWare and enjoy it. Audio is also not yet supported in VMWare.
  • The “Always stay on” setting is back with this Jelly Bean release (it was a regression of the initial JB release)
The Hardware OpenGL performance seem to be very good, apart with some graphics chipset which seem to have a problem ; on one of my machine, I have an integrated Intel HD graphic adapter which runs with poor performance on Linux and runs OK on Windows but with flickering on the AndroVMplayer window… please report which configurations are working/not-working for you.

Download links are available here and installation instructions here.

I also want to welcome Sam (sam@androvm.org) who begun to work for the AndroVM project for some weeks now and who helped me to release this version. You should see him posting on this blog and answering your questions.

Enjoy this release !

Dan.

PS: These images still need a recent CPU (that is with MMX, SSE, SSE2 and SSE3 extensions) ; I’ll compile a specific version which doesn’t need these extensions but don’t want to remove this prerequisite from standard versions because it seems to break NDK compatibility.

AndroVM Jelly Bean release

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Hi,

after several weeks, I’m glad to release the first AndroVM images based on Jelly Bean.

This release is based on the following components :

  • AOSP 4.1.1_r4 branch
  • 3.4 Linux kernel (android-goldfish-3.4 branch) – previous buildroid images were based on a 2.6.29 kernel

The port to 4.1 was not so easy because of some bugs in AOSP (I’ll get back on that later) and because the audio hardware API changed from ICS. Then, I’ve decided to abandon the previous audio library (which was limited to output) and ported the 4.1 Nexus 7 audio library to the VirtualBox environment. The very good side effect is that input audio now works :-) Please tell me if it works correctly on your setup.

This release introduces a change in storage management : there is now one “system” VDI (virtual disk) and one “data” VDI – that’s a total of 3 VDIs with the sdcard one. This should make upgrade easier as it will be possible to change the system VDI while keeping all data.

OVA files can be found on the new Download page. You’ll find the 3 usual versions (tablet, phone, tablet with phone capabilities) as well as one “google apps” enabled version (based on tablet) and a “google apps” and “houdini” enabled version (also based on tablet) – it seems that the “houdini” libs extracted from the gingerbread intel/orange phone work also correcly on JB. I’m working actively on hardware OpenGL and will release support for it asap.

After releasing the OVAs, I realized that when you keep standard display parameters on the tablet versions (1024×600 with 160 dpi), you will get a “phone interface” (no status bar, notifications on the top of the screen, …). You have to upgrade to a higher resolution (1024×768 at least) to get the “tablet interface”.

Important point : I discourage the use of VirtualBox 4.2 for the moment, it seems many of us get very poor performance using buildroid/androVM images on this version. I’m investigating it…