⛅ Android Development Setup Without Android Studio in Kotlin Multiplatform

Apr 4, 2025 - ⧖ 4 min

banner

  • ok first you need android cmdline tools link, but mostly i use arch linux, and aur have this in link, so run yay -S android-sdk-cmdline-tools-latest --noconfirm
  • but if you not in linux environment you need download cmdline-tools and extract it somewhere, make sure to export cmdline-tools folder to your environment

Set environment variables quote We recommend setting the environment variable for ANDROID_HOME when using the command line. Also, set your command search path to include ANDROID_HOME/tools, ANDROID_HOME/tools/bin, and ANDROID_HOME/platform-tools to find the most common tools. The steps vary depending on your OS, but read How to set environment variables for general guidance.

  • after finish install of cmd-line tools add its path to your environment with export PATH="$PATH:/opt/android-sdk/cmdline-tools/latest/bin"
  • set your android sdk root with export ANDROID_HOME=/opt/android-sdk
  • now you get
ls /opt/android-sdk/cmdline-tools/latest/bin
apkanalyzer  d8    profgen  resourceshrinker  screenshot2
avdmanager   lint  r8       retrace           sdkmanager
  • first we will use sdkmanager to update our sdk with sdkmanager --update
  • next install minimal development tool with (choose version based on your need, use sdkmanager --list to get all available package and its version)
sdkmanager "platform-tools" \
           "build-tools;34.0.0" \
           "platforms;android-34" \
           "system-images;android-34;google_apis;x86_64"
  • when you run previous command you will ask about license, just type y, and make sure you have permission to your ANDROID_HOME , if not add permision with
sudo chown -R $USER:$USER $ANDROID_HOME
sudo chmod -R 775 $ANDROID_HOME
  • you can list installed package in /opt/android-sdk
  • dont forget to add installed package to your path
export PATH=$ANDROID_HOME/cmdline-tools/latest/bin:$PATH
export PATH=$ANDROID_HOME/platform-tools:$PATH
export PATH=$ANDROID_HOME/build-tools/34.0.0:$PATH
  • finally install gradle, sudo pacman -S gradle --noconfirm
  • you can create profile of all exported path with (note: I use ZSH)
// add this to your shell profile (mine is .zshrc)
export ANDROID_HOME=/opt/android-sdk
export PATH=$ANDROID_HOME/build-tools/34.0.0/:$PATH
export PATH=$ANDROID_HOME/cmdline-tools/latest/bin/:$PATH
export PATH=$ANDROID_HOME/emulator/:$PATH
export PATH=$ANDROID_HOME/platform-tools/:$PATH

Create Android Project with gradle

to create new application we can use kotlin multiplatform wizard

  • we will use kotlin multiplatform wizard, link
  • choose your app name and click download
  • unzip to your project root folder
  • next run ./gradlew to download all needed dependencies
  • ok, we will test our project by build debug app then run it on real android device
  • first we need to enable developer mode of our android device (step to activate android phone dev mode is different, so search for your phone)
  • in android developer mode, choose wireless debugging and enable it
  • make sure your android device is connected to same network with your computer
  • in wireless debugging you will find your ip adress and your port
  • we will use adb to connect into your phone with pair code, click on pair deevice with pairing code on your phone, you will give by needed information,
  • run adb pair <ip:port> <pair-code> ex: adb pair 192.168.1.10:41245 316836
// example of successfull pair 
$ adb pair 192.168.1.10:43423 218265
Successfully paired to 192.168.1.10:43423 [guid=adb-1027525355008516-aqgzTQ]
  • after pairing, you need to connect into device with adb connect <ip:port>, with this we can automatically install our app to connected android devices.
// example of successfull connect
$ adb connect 192.168.1.10:34771
connected to 192.168.1.10:34771
  • next list your device with adb devices
$ adb devices
List of devices attached
192.168.1.10:34771      device
  • you can list all gradlew task with ./gradlew tasks
  • to build and install debug app to your phone run ./gradlew assembleDebug
  • then install it with ./gradlew installDebug
  • if previous command success you will find new app in your phone (name will same as your project name)
  • there also continuous mode, to re install if some file was changed ./gradlew installDebug --continuous

Additional Note

  • make sure to install kotlin in your system (i use neovim with lsp server, and kotlin lsp server need kotlin compiler), you can use sdkman (https://sdkman.io/install/) to install kotlin.
  • if lsp still fail to resolve androidx import, make sure you add implementation(libs.androidx.core.ktx) in build.gradle.kts inside androidMain.dependencies