[App Inventor Open Source Development] building appinventor2 for linux

 I am trying to build appinventor2 for an ubuntu based distro (12.04)   Build is successful (and tests also), but afterwards I miss a 'make install' alike script that would copy files to correct paths.
 Following your guide I am able to run de build server, the local server, etc. But just running misc/emulator-support/aiStarter.py will complain about adb not found in the installation path (/usr/google/appinventor)
 I guess I am missing some components I should download separately, like the emulator, and put in the correct place before running aiStarter.py

 My goal is to generate from sources an struture similar to the one in your already packaged debian package.

 If this question is answered elsewhere just point me there, please, I searched through the forum and I did not find it.

Thanks for any help and congratulations for your great product and for making it opensource.



As far as I know there are no deployment scripts as the one you are looking for. Different people might have their custom scripts, but there's no canonical one that everyone uses. Most of us run in dev mode while coding stuff. 
Having said that, it could be a nice contribution to agree on a particular way of doing it and adding it to the main repo.




Thanks for your quick reply.

 In fact, I was not looking at the correct place, following appinventor sources README I built appinventor local web, build server, companion apk, etc. But, what I was looking for, and you distribute with the installer, happens to be a different thing: the emulator with companion apk loaded to be used with your web site, is not it?

  I am facing the following problems:
1.- Installer notes are great describing what comes in the package, but it gives no information about where the sources are taken from. There are all the binaries in commands-for-Appinventor with no mention from where each one comes from.
2.- Some of the commands happen to be the android emulator, it would be helpful to know if I can use any emulator relase or I should build with a particular one.
3.- aiStarter.py  points to the absolute path /usr/google/appinventor/commands-for-Appinventor, should not be better to leave it to the path variable?  Imagine you do already have adb installed elsewhere, for example.
4.- I have no clue about how to build the Appinentor-emulator-data file
5,- having in appinventor sources some script to install in a certain prefix the commands would be quite useful.

 I guess the main problem is that I am not an android developer like you are and I did not have all the emulator environment setup before beginning, but anyhow, I would like to know the minimun set of files (and where sources come from) needed to distribute an aiStarter launcher.

 I guess I should compile adb from https://android.googlesource.com/platform/system/core  (I am still trying to find out how to do it and fighting with Android.mk files)  and the emulator from google android-sdk. Hopefully Ubuntu 14.04 has already packages for all this stuff.

 Now I will be on holidays for a week, afterwards I hope I will be able to help with this, if needed.




I recommend not compiling adb, just install google's android tools. I use the bundled development package. Adb is used by app inventor, but we certainly didn't write it, so you're not missing anything by using an easy binary install.