Signal-Android/BUILDING.md

Building TextSecure

Basics

TextSecure uses Gradle to build the project and to maintain dependencies.

Building TextSecure

The following steps should help you (re)build TextSecure from the command line.

1. Checkout the source somewhere on your filesystem with

    git clone https://github.com/WhisperSystems/TextSecure.git
   

2. Make sure you have the Android SDK installed somewhere on your system.

3. Ensure the "Android Support Repository" is installed from the Android SDK manager.

4. Create a local.properties file at the root of your source checkout and add an sdk.dir entry to it.

    sdk.dir=\<path to your sdk installation\>
   

5. Execute Gradle:

    ./gradlew build
   

Re-building native components

Note: This step is optional; native components are contained as binaries (see library/libs).

1. Ensure that the Android NDK is installed.

Execute ndk-build:

cd library
ndk-build

Afterwards, execute Gradle as above to re-create the APK.

Setting up a development environment

Android Studio is the recommended development environment.

1. Install Android Studio
2. Make sure the "Android Support Repository" is installed in the Android Studio SDK.
3. Make sure the latest "Android SDK build-tools" is installed in the Android Studio SDK.
4. Create a new Android Studio project. from the Quickstart pannel (use File > Close Project to see it), choose "Checkout from Version Control" then "git".
5. Paste the URL for the TextSecure project when prompted (https://github.com/WhisperSystems/TextSecure.git)
6. Android studio should detect the presence of a project file and ask you wethere to open it. Click "yes".
7. Default config options should be good enough.
8. Project initialisation and build should proceed.

Contributing code

Code contributions should be sent via github as pull requests, from feature branches as explained here.

Mailing list

Development discussion happens on the whispersystems mailing list. To join Send emails to whispersystems@lists.riseup.net