To add creation and management of emulators, direct deployment to emulators through buildozer for both Android and Ios

[Samael-TLB]

Description

Currently, buildozer only supports built app deployment to a device and not to an emulator. Moreover, there is no commands for creating and managing the emulators and for deploying the app to an emulator for both Android and Ios. As, internally, we are using the command line tools for both the platforms to achieve the build, and as both the platforms support command line tools for creation, management and deployment to emulators, we can definitely have a little bit of code be added to buildozer to add this feature.

Consequently, we can take inspiration from beehive project who have already achieved this. This will make user's life easier and would make the buildozer features much more better, thereby increasing ease of usage.

[Android-for-Python]

An emulator is a device (although a virtual one).
If the user creates an emulator, adb (and hence Buildozer) will find it automatically.

To create an emulator https://github.com/Android-for-Python/Android-for-Python-Users#appendix-b--using-an-emulator

[Samael-TLB]

Hi, @Android-for-Python I definitely understand what you have hinted at. What I would love buildozer to have is native capability for creation and managing and deployment to an emulator (avd). This is possible as android provides the command line tools for doing the same. The current way is hacky and needs either to have android studios or use the emulator cmd tool directly. This bleeds out the functionality outside of kivy ecosystem and puts pressure on users to have a separate dependency (Android Studio) or learn the cmd tools. For completeness and ease of use, we can definitely have these functionalities built into buildozer as its gonna be an easy extension (due to buildozer internally using the cmd tools only). Also, for being future proof and increasing developer productivity, we can have a software gui solution that can help in creation of kivy apps.

[Samael-TLB]

Also, we can have the same capabilities integrated for ios too in buildozer

[Android-for-Python]

To me it looks like reinventing the wheel. Adding complexity without adding significant utility. There is no reason to replicate what Android Studio does, and well.

I understand your view is different.