
Chromeos-apk – Run Android APKs on Chrome OS, OS X, Linux and Windows - ProfDreamer
https://github.com/vladikoff/chromeos-apk/blob/master/README.md
======
cryptoz
This is amazing. There's a long reddit thread and some additional instructions
here:
[http://www.reddit.com/r/Android/comments/2gv035/you_can_now_...](http://www.reddit.com/r/Android/comments/2gv035/you_can_now_run_android_apps_on_chrome_for/)

From the README:

> Soundcloud - Works, crashes when playing sound

Funny definition of 'works'.

~~~
benjamincburns
I experience the same thing with devs and 'done' all the time.

"It's _done_ ; it just has some bugs that need fixing."

To be fair, I've said this sentence myself in earnest several times.

~~~
hrktb
OTOH, software that has no bugs in need of fixing is usually not a realistic
goal.

You can say it will probably never be done, or you update your definition of
"done" to "it has no bugs stopping a release". Personally I prefer the latter.

~~~
thejdude
From my experience the problem isn't the existence of bugs (like the existence
of gravity), but the widespread occurrence of the cowboy programmer with very
limited attention span.

Often there are tons of TODO comments left in the code (including TODO comment
this class), unit tests are non-existent, a simple smoke test will cause a
null pointer exception or not even deploy, or they committed schema migration
SQL scripts but did not change the entities/data objects corresponding to
those tables so the - now mandatory - new columns cannot even be FILLED by the
app.

Stuff like that, that isn't DONE, it's deserving a punch in the face. OTOH, it
may be symptomatic of our don't-blame culture that the consulting firm in
question isn't fired on the spot or the much needed punch in the face isn't
delivered. Those are days I wish we had US-American at-will employment and
hire/fire culture.

------
bmelton
So, now we can write apps in Angular that run on the web and compile to Java
so that we can install them to Android, running on ChromeOS, running on OSX.

Brilliant.

Edit: Perhaps the punny nature of this is deserving of downvotes, but the
statement above is the actual use case I presented to a co-developer,
discussing how this project could be of use to our app, which was built with
Ionic.

FWIW, there's value in it (the app, not necessarily this post) even if it
means having to unplug fewer devices to swap them out with different devices
to test.

~~~
ode
[https://www.destroyallsoftware.com/talks/the-birth-and-
death...](https://www.destroyallsoftware.com/talks/the-birth-and-death-of-
javascript)

------
byuu
Can anyone explain how this differs from using an Android emulator?
([http://developer.android.com/tools/help/emulator.html](http://developer.android.com/tools/help/emulator.html))

Is it a matter of features, speed, or convenience? Obviously, all of those can
be overcome, be it as a fork of the official emulator or as a third-party
emulator. For instance, this new Chrome extension must be the same thing under
the hood: a Dalvik runtime, _possibly_ an ARM->Intel recompiler for any NDK
applications, etc.

I figured the only reason this wasn't done to mass effect already was because
it wasn't in demand. But if it's so desirable, surely creating an actual
emulator would be superior to hacking up web browser extensions and ostensibly
playing cat-and-mouse with Google over this?

~~~
cryptoz
It's been a few years since I dared run the official emulator, and I used to
have an underpowered computer for development, but last time it took about 10
minutes to boot Android and another 2-3 minutes to open an app.

I presume it's been improved since then and runs nicer on better hardware, but
my first impulse is that speed is a huge concern in Android emulation.
Convenience only matters if speed is solved, but then it becomes huge.

~~~
dozy
Hey Android developer here. I used to have the same issue - even on a
fantastic machine the emulator would run very slowly, or not at all. This is
now __completely different __

You no longer have to emulate ARM. You can run the native x86 image, using GPU
acceleration, and the thing screams. I can get multiple high resolution
emulators running in parallel without issue. I 'm __still __used to debugging
every single compile on an actual device having been through years of slow
emulation, but let me tell you that the environment is quite different now.
Genymotion is even better, but not by much with regards to performance.

~~~
tokenizerrr
The last time I worked on Android (which was about 6-12 months ago) I tried to
get the x86 image working on my laptop, but it apparently requires an intel
processor[1]. Do you happen to be aware of any speedups for AMD processors?

[1]:
[https://developer.android.com/tools/devices/emulator.html#vm...](https://developer.android.com/tools/devices/emulator.html#vm-
windows)

~~~
0x0
It looks like they are using KVM to accelerate in the linux sdk, maybe that
will work on amd?

~~~
andor
Yes, KVM acceleration works fine with AMD processors.

------
AdmiralAsshat
Neat proof of concept.

I hope Google gets us something official sooner rather than later. It's a
little disheartening that I own a Chromebook Pixel and yet I can't use
Google's own hardware to design or test Android apps without installing
Eclipse on a sideloaded Linux chroot via Crouton.

~~~
jonursenbach
How is that disheartening? The whole point of the Chromebook is to only use
the web.

~~~
AdmiralAsshat
The fact that Google is starting to roll out the ability for Android apps to
run as Chrome apps suggests that they are aware of the limitations of being
"web only". It also stands to reason that if they're going to soon allow
Android apps to run under ChromeOS, you should be able to develop them too,
no?

To boot, the Pixel's relatively decent hardware, high-res display, and
touchscreen just seem like it would be ideal for testing Android apps if it
could be done natively.

I doubt it will ever be as simple as I would like. But I can dream.

~~~
passfree
There are no limitations of what you can do via a web browser. My company
personally developed and delivered projects otherwise thought not possible in
browser environments. With the help of extensions and solid JS and HTML,
everything is possible. Of course super low level stuff are out of the picture
but this is not normal users will be concerned about.

~~~
objclxt
> _" There are no limitations of what you can do via a web browser" [...] "Of
> course super low level stuff are out of the picture"_

...so what you're saying is there _are_ limitations around what you can do
with a browser.

------
kasabali
I will absolutely go nuts if this thing manages to run OneNote on my Debian
desktop.

~~~
ryanmarsh
Please don't downvote this.

What is on debian today that you can't get on or don't like about OSX? I ask
this as a former Linux die hard. What am I missing back in the Linux world
these days?

Also, One Note is killer isn't it? It is so much nicer than Evernote. I've
loved One Note ever since the first time it shipped with Office. It's so great
to see Microsoft porting their better apps to other platforms.

~~~
ryanmarsh
and I got downvoted... sheesh HN.

~~~
untog
Saying "please don't downvote this" does not immunise you from getting
downvoted.

~~~
ryanmarsh
It was more like, "hey wait I'm not attacking Linux, just read the full
comment". Didn't work.

~~~
hristov
I read the whole comment. It is still an off topic plug.

~~~
pigeons
And a ridiculous one

------
oldgun
This is amazing.

I hope Google could really carry this project as far as possible. The next
several major issues would be polishing up the platform, eliminating the bugs,
unifying the android and chromebook development interface. Think of one day
when android developers could actually design apps for the desktop. How cool
would that be?

That's when Microsoft should really get worried.

------
wzsddtc
We worked with the ARC team at Vine as a launch partner, there were 0
modifications that we had to do to get it working on ARC. The only difference
was that the "bugs" we had to fix were all reproducible on Nexus devices as
well BUT the threading model had to be more strict on ARC in terms accessing
system resources.

------
niutech
Running Android apps in Chrome on desktop is huge! I'm glad that the ARC
runtime I provided in [https://github.com/vladikoff/chromeos-
apk/issues/5](https://github.com/vladikoff/chromeos-apk/issues/5) helped to
achieve this.

~~~
ode
#humblebrag

------
tracker1
Hope this means good netflix support in Linux.

~~~
tkubacki
Netflix should work on Linux natively (at least in Ubuntu) very soon
[http://www.omgubuntu.co.uk/2014/09/netflix-linux-
html5-nss-c...](http://www.omgubuntu.co.uk/2014/09/netflix-linux-html5-nss-
change-request)

------
bla2
Interesting, Google announced working on this on this year's I/O and posted
the first apps just one week ago ( [http://chrome.blogspot.com/2014/09/first-
set-of-android-apps...](http://chrome.blogspot.com/2014/09/first-set-of-
android-apps-coming-to.html) ).

------
asadotzler
Java makes a triumphant comeback in the browser?

------
kyrrewk
I have had some success running Android x86
([http://www.android-x86.org/](http://www.android-x86.org/)) in VirtualBox.

------
bussiere
Fuuuuu Out There a good game only available on mobile crash with this solution
...

Dam but it looks full of promise i hope one day it will work well ...

------
mattfrommars
How is this really good? Android apps are really good but they are designed
for touch interface on mobile devices, not desktop.

~~~
AlexeyBrin
A lot of new laptops of today have touch screens displays, this trend will
only grow in the future.

------
Flenser
could you use this to run ChromiumTestShell.apk on windows for testing android
chrome rendering?

[1] [http://commondatastorage.googleapis.com/chromium-browser-
con...](http://commondatastorage.googleapis.com/chromium-browser-
continuous/index.html?prefix=Android/)

------
em3rgent0rdr
Awesome! Works for me on arch linux running latest chromium. Much faster than
running android emulator!

------
chj
Google needs to do this.

------
stuaxo
Its about bloody time!

------
mjcohen
Want Open Office!

