1 [![Snap Status](https://build.snapcraft.io/badge/anbox/anbox.svg)](https://build.snapcraft.io/user/anbox/anbox)
2 [![Build Status](https://travis-ci.org/anbox/anbox.svg?branch=master)](https://travis-ci.org/anbox/anbox)
6 Anbox is a container-based approach to boot a full Android system on a
7 regular GNU/Linux system like Ubuntu. In other words: Anbox will let
8 you run Android on your Linux system without the slowness of
13 Anbox uses Linux namespaces (user, pid, uts, net, mount, ipc) to run a
14 full Android system in a container and provide Android applications on
15 any GNU/Linux-based platform.
17 The Android inside the container has no direct access to any hardware.
18 All hardware access is going through the anbox daemon on the host. We're
19 reusing what Android implemented within the QEMU-based emulator for OpenGL
20 ES accelerated rendering. The Android system inside the container uses
21 different pipes to communicate with the host system and sends all hardware
22 access commands through these.
24 For more details have a look at the following documentation pages:
26 * [Android Hardware OpenGL ES emulation design overview](https://android.googlesource.com/platform/external/qemu/+/emu-master-dev/android/android-emugl/DESIGN)
27 * [Android QEMU fast pipes](https://android.googlesource.com/platform/external/qemu/+/emu-master-dev/android/docs/ANDROID-QEMU-PIPE.TXT)
28 * [The Android "qemud" multiplexing daemon](https://android.googlesource.com/platform/external/qemu/+/emu-master-dev/android/docs/ANDROID-QEMUD.TXT)
29 * [Android qemud services](https://android.googlesource.com/platform/external/qemu/+/emu-master-dev/android/docs/ANDROID-QEMUD-SERVICES.TXT)
31 Anbox is currently suited for the desktop use case but can be used on
32 mobile operating systems like Ubuntu Touch, Sailfish OS or Lune OS too.
33 However as the mapping of Android applications is currently desktop specific
34 this needs additional work to supported stacked window user interfaces too.
36 The Android runtime environment ships with a minimal customized Android system
37 image based on the [Android Open Source Project](https://source.android.com/).
38 The used image is currently based on Android 7.1.1
42 See our [installation instructions](docs/install.md) for details.
44 ## Supported Linux Distributions
46 At the moment we officially support the following Linux distributions:
48 * Ubuntu 16.04 (xenial)
49 * Ubuntu 18.04 (bionic)
51 However all other distributions supporting snap packages should work as
52 well as long as they provide the mandatory kernel modules (see kernel/).
54 ## Install and Run Android Applications
62 To build the Anbox runtime itself there is nothing special to know. We're using
63 cmake as build system. A few build dependencies need to be present on your host
73 * libboost-program-options
79 * mesa (libegl1, libgles2)
87 On an Ubuntu system you can install all build dependencies with the following
91 $ sudo apt install build-essential cmake cmake-data debhelper dbus google-mock \
92 libboost-dev libboost-filesystem-dev libboost-log-dev libboost-iostreams-dev \
93 libboost-program-options-dev libboost-system-dev libboost-test-dev \
94 libboost-thread-dev libcap-dev libsystemd-dev libegl1-mesa-dev \
95 libgles2-mesa-dev libglm-dev libgtest-dev liblxc1 \
96 libproperties-cpp-dev libprotobuf-dev libsdl2-dev libsdl2-image-dev lxc-dev \
97 pkg-config protobuf-compiler python-minimal
99 We recommend Ubuntu 18.04 (bionic) with **GCC 7.x** as your build environment.
104 Afterwards you can build Anbox with
107 $ git clone https://github.com/anbox/anbox.git
121 will install the necessary bits into your system.
123 If you want to build the anbox snap instead you can do this with the following
127 $ mkdir android-images
128 $ cp /path/to/android.img android-images/android.img
132 The result will be a .snap file you can install on a system supporting snaps
135 $ snap install --dangerous --devmode anbox_1_amd64.snap
140 Running Anbox from a local build requires a few more things you need to know
141 about. Please have a look at the ["Runtime Setup"](docs/runtime-setup.md)
146 You will find additional documentation for Anbox in the *docs* subdirectory
147 of the project source.
149 Interesting things to have a look at
151 * [Runtime Setup](docs/runtime-setup.md)
152 * [Build Android image](docs/build-android.md)
153 * [Generate Android emugl source](docs/generate-emugl-source.md)
157 If you have found an issue with Anbox, please [file a bug](https://github.com/anbox/anbox/issues/new).
161 If you want to get in contact with the developers please feel free to join the
162 *#anbox* IRC channel on [Freenode](https://freenode.net/).
164 ## Copyright and Licensing
166 Anbox reuses code from other projects like the Android QEMU emulator. These
167 projects are available in the external/ subdirectory with the licensing terms
170 The Anbox source itself, if not stated differently in the relevant source files,
171 is licensed under the terms of the GPLv3 license.