Developing for Android

While developing a hApp, it's not that useful to just have one agent to test your hApp with. Instead, you usually need a couple of peers to be able to interact with one another.

The scaffolding setup steps in how to create an end-user hApp and how to create a holochain runtime create a new script in the top level package.json file called network:android. This script runs an agent in your local computer and another in an Android device, and enables communication between them.

Since we want to develop for the Android platform, we need to be inside the androidDev devShell:

nix develop .#androidDev

Run all the following commands inside this terminal shell.

Before running the network:android command, make sure your Android device is connected to your computer via a USB cable and accessible to the tauri tooling by running:

adb devices

You should see your device listed in the output of that command.

Also make sure that your Android device is in the same wifi network as your computer. This is necessary for them to see each other and connect in a small holochain network.

NOTE

If you haven't setup your Android device yet, head over to Android device setup to do so.

We are now ready to run the command:

npm

npm run network:android

yarn

yarn network:android

pnpm

pnpm network:android

If you want to see logs coming from your rust backend, you can run this command:

adb logcat

---

That's it! Have fun while building your hApp. When you are satisfied with what you have and want to release a new production version of your app, go to Shipping.