Building Bitbucket Pipelines for Android

TL;DR

Something weird is going on with certain versions of the Android Command Line Tools install of ndk-build that comes with ndk-bundle. ndk-bundle includes a version of make so that, you know, they can make without worrying about whether it’s installed, BUT it appears that at least one of the binaries included in the ndk-bundle package can’t find make. You can use a Docker container to track down the location of the make executable.

The Pipeline File and the Error

bitbucket-pipelines.yml:

image: java:8
pipelines:
  branches: 
    my-branch:
      # build the app
      - step:
          name: Build
          script:
            - wget --quiet --output-document=cmdline-tools.zip https://dl.google.com/android/repository/commandlinetools-linux-6858069_latest.zip
            - unzip -o -qq cmdline-tools.zip -d .
            - export ANDROID_HOME="/opt/atlassian/pipelines/agent/build/cmdline-tools"
            - export PATH="$ANDROID_HOME/bin:$ANDROID_HOME/platform-tools:$PATH" 
            - yes | sdkmanager --install "ndk-bundle" --sdk_root=$ANDROID_HOME --verbose
            - yes | sdkmanager --install "platform-tools" --sdk_root=$ANDROID_HOME
            ...<SNIP>
            - ./gradlew clean --full-stacktrace --scan

And I was getting this error message:

> Task :pluginproject:ndkClean FAILED
ERROR: Cannot find 'make' program. Please install Cygwin make package
or define the GNUMAKE variable to point to it.
/opt/atlassian/pipelines/agent/build/cmdline-tools/ndk-bundle/build/ndk-build: line 151: file: command not found
FAILURE: Build failed with an exception.
* What went wrong:
Execution failed for task ':pluginproject:ndkClean'.
> Process 'command '/opt/atlassian/pipelines/agent/build/cmdline-tools/ndk-bundle/ndk-build'' finished with non-zero exit value 1

The Solution

Okay, so first of all, that whole Cygwin error is generic and what my friend called it in a spectacular portmanteau of colloquialisms, “smoking herring.”

The solution is to set an environment variable called GNUMAKE and point it at the make executable that’s in your ndk-bundle package.

- export GNUMAKE=$ANDROID_HOME/ndk-bundle/prebuilt/linux-x86_64/bin/make

The tricky part in all this was trying to remember how to use Docker - because lemme tell ya, I was tired of burning build minutes on Bitbucket doing things like “ls -la.”

Doing this locally

You basically have to create a local version of Bitbucket Pipelines’ build environment:

First, set up the Docker container and do a bunch of work in it:

 # run your docker container in interactive, TTY mode
 $ docker run -it java:8 /bin/bash
 root@a128c0c78584:/# ls
 bin  boot  dev  etc  home  lib  lib64  media  mnt  opt  proc  root  run  sbin  srv  sys  tmp  usr  var

 # create the working directory that mimics BBP's env
 root@a128c0c78584:/# mkdir -p /opt/atlassian/pipelines/agent/build
 root@a128c0c78584:/# cd !$

 # so now you're going to run all of the installation commands that you'd have your BBP robot do.
 # setting ANDROID_HOME, wgetting and unzipping, sdkmanager installs, etc.
 root@a128c0c78584:/opt/atlassian/pipelines/agent/build# get --quiet --output-document=cmdline-tools.zip https://dl.google.com/android/repository/commandlinetools-linux-6858069_latest.zip

…etc.

Now, find the make executable and point the GNUMAKE variable to it. In this case I’m looking inside the ndk-bundle directory because I knew that the ndk-build tool that came with it was the package that was having a hard time finding make.

 # find your `make`
 root@a128c0c78584:/opt/atlassian/pipelines/agent/build/cmdline-tools/ndk-bundle# find . -name make
 ./prebuilt/linux-x86_64/bin/make

 # tell Gradle how to find it
 root@a128c0c78584:/opt/atlassian/pipelines/agent/build/cmdline-tools/ndk-bundle# export GNUMAKE=$ANDROID_HOME/ndk-bundle/prebuilt/linux-x86_64/bin/make

Now, in another window, run a docker cp command to get your files to the “build” directory”

 inger.klekacz@~/Projects/ik-android $ docker cp . musing_mendel:/opt/atlassian/pipelines/agent/build

In the terminal window where you’re inside the Docker container, you can try the build now.

 root@a128c0c78584:/opt/atlassian/pipelines/agent/build/cmdline-tools/ndk-bundle# cd $AGENT_HOME

 # make sure your buildfiles are there, the ones you copied over from your parent host
 # here you can see some files that are decidedly not native to Docker - ones you downloaded and ones you copied.
 root@a128c0c78584:/opt/atlassian/pipelines/agent/build/cmdline-tools# ls -l
 drwxr-xr-x  4  504 dialout     4096 Mar 31 14:58 app
 drwxr-xr-x  3  504 dialout     4096 Mar 31 14:58 bash_scripts
 -rw-r--r--  1  504 dialout     2310 Apr  7 00:16 bitbucket-pipelines.yml
 -rw-r--r--  1  504 dialout     1074 Mar 31 14:58 build.gradle
 drwxr-xr-x 14 root root        4096 Apr  7 01:01 cmdline-tools
 -rw-r--r--  1 root root    87259900 Apr  7 00:50 cmdline-tools.zip
 drwxr-xr-x  2  504 dialout     4096 May 26  2020 failnet
 drwxr-xr-x  3  504 dialout     4096 May 26  2020 gradle
 -rw-r--r--  1  504 dialout       21 May 26  2020 gradle.properties
 -rwxr-xr-x  1  504 dialout     5299 May 26  2020 gradlew
 -rw-r--r--  1  504 dialout     2260 May 26  2020 gradlew.bat

 # run the clean!
 root@a128c0c78584:/opt/atlassian/pipelines/agent/build/cmdline-tools# ./gradlew clean


 Downloading https://services.gradle.org/distributions/gradle-6.1.1-all.zip
 <SNIP - downloading dots>
 Unzipping /root/.gradle/wrapper/dists/gradle-6.1.1-all/cfmwm155h49vnt3hynmlrsdst/gradle-6.1.1-all.zip to /root/.gradle/wrapper/dists/gradle-6.1.1-all/cfmwm155h49vnt3hynmlrsdst
 Set executable permissions for: /root/.gradle/wrapper/dists/gradle-6.1.1-all/cfmwm155h49vnt3hynmlrsdst/gradle-6.1.1/bin/gradle

 Welcome to Gradle 6.1.1!

 <SNIP>

 Starting a Gradle Daemon (subsequent builds will be faster)

 > Configure project :pluginproject
 executing ndkBuild
 executing ndkBuild clean

 > Task :pluginproject:ndkClean
 /opt/atlassian/pipelines/agent/build/cmdline-tools/ndk-bundle/build/ndk-build: line 151: file: command not found
 make: Entering directory '/opt/atlassian/pipelines/agent/build/pluginproject/src/main'

 Android NDK: WARNING: APP_PLATFORM android-16 is higher than android:minSdkVersion 1 in ./AndroidManifest.xml. NDK binaries will *not* be compatible with devices older than android-16. See https://android.googlesource.com/platform/ndk/+/master/docs/user/common_problems.md for more information.    
 make: Leaving directory '/opt/atlassian/pipelines/agent/build/pluginproject/src/main'
 make: Entering directory '/opt/atlassian/pipelines/agent/build/pluginproject/src/main'

 ...<SNIP - tests running>...

 make: Leaving directory '/opt/atlassian/pipelines/agent/build/pluginproject/src/main'

 BUILD SUCCESSFUL in 1m 14s
 3 actionable tasks: 1 executed, 2 up-to-date

—

MOAR TIPS

Ya filthy animals

Some bonus Docker commands for people like me who only directly interact with Docker about once a quarter (though it looks like I’ll be doing it more often now…), and who ALWAYS piss away a nontrivial amount of minutes trying to remember how to start a container that doesn’t just quit immediately:

# fire up a Docker container that will keep running even once it's "done," like an Ubuntu image or some other OS
# it will stop when you `exit` it
$ docker run -it <image name>:<version> /bin/bash 
# you MUST specify -it the first time you build this container. if it's already built, and you try to run it with -it, it'll get confused.

# find it again in the future - it will have all your files, but unless you put your variable declarations in your .bash_rc, you'll lose those
$ docker container ls -a

# Log into it again:
$ docker start <container id>
$ docker attach <container id>

# be advised that you may have to hit Enter/Return once you've done "docker attach" or the interface won't look like it's done anything. 
# got me good a couple times.