This post is to announce that the revamped python-for-android toolchain, introduced in this previous post, has now been merged into python-for-android’s master branch. This is now the master branch going forward.
The revamp project is largely (but not quite) feature complete with the old toolchain, supporting almost all the same options when building pygame-based APKs. It also supports a new and much better SDL2 backend, which Kivy will move to in the future, but which also supports other kinds of python projects such as Vispy as described in the previous post.
We’ve done our best to minimise problems arising from this change. The old toolchain (with distribute.sh and build.py) is still available in the old_toolchain branch. Issues and PRs relating to this branch are still accepted, though existing PRs will need to be retargeted or merged manually (we’ll try to do what’s easiest case by case, if necessary).
If you use buildozer, this now pulls from the old_toolchain branch and so will work exactly as before. However, you will need to install the latest version from pypi or github (at least version 0.30) for this to work. Older versions of buildozer will continue to build APKs fine with existing projects, but if you create a new one they will download the new and incompatible python-for-android master. The revamp includes a fake distribute.sh executable giving these same instructions, so if this happens the problem and solution should be clearly displayed.
The new toolchain is currently documented (temporarily) here. We’ll push the new documentation to the normal readthedocs site as soon as possible, which will also include the legacy doc for the old toolchain so nothing is lost.
In the slightly longer term, the new toolchain will receive an official release and hopefully be released itself on pypi; unlike the old toolchain, it behaves as a fully installable python module with an improved command line interface.