26. December 2019

Build Installer for your Python application – PyInstaller

Do you have your Python application ready? Now it’s time to distribute it. The question is how to bundle it?

One way of bundling Python application into exe/binary file is to use PyInstaller.

You can do it using following commands:

pip install pyinstaller
pyinstaller file_with_main.py

The result will be stored in directory dist. The directory contains one build for the operating system that you’re running.

22. December 2019

Jenkins Generic Webhook Plugin failed with: Did not find any jobs with GenericTrigger configured

Generic Webhook Plugins allows invoking build of Jenkins job.

First of all, you need to set the token in job configuration.

Go to Build Triggers, check Generic Webhook Triggers.

Jenkins Build Trigger

Set Token e.g. to WEBHOOK-TOKEN.

Invoke curl:

curl http://localhost:8080/generic-webhook-trigger/invoke?token=WEBHOOK-TOKEN

It might happen that job build fails with the message:

{"jobs":null,
"message":"Did not find any jobs with GenericTrigger configured! 
If you are using a token, you need to pass it like ...trigger/invoke?token=TOKENHERE. 
If you are not using a token, you need to authenticate like 
http://user:passsword@jenkins/generic-webhook... "}

To fix the problem make sure that Trigger builds remotely is not checked in job configuration. The token set in this field has priority.

Once the duplicate token is removed the build should be possible to start.

23. April 2019

Android Studio Unresolved reference: activity_main – R.layout and R.id

You can easily run into mysterious errors with Android Studio. Here is one.

Suddenly all references related to R.layout or R.id stopped to work and build failed with a message like this:

Compilation error. See log for more details
Unresolved reference: activity_main
Unresolved reference: url_edittext
Unresolved reference: update_button

The code looked like this:

    override fun onCreate(savedInstanceState: Bundle?) {
        super.onCreate(savedInstanceState)
        setContentView(R.layout.activity_main)

I tried clean, builds, rebuilds. Nothing helped. The problem was caused by simple import which accidentally occurred in Activity file:

import android.R

After removing this line the whole project was working again and even code hinting was correct.

22. June 2018

How to display build log in Xcode

Xcode has a very minimalistic design when working with build errors. Sometimes it’s necessary to get more information about a failed build and it might not be obvious how to do it.

The answer is simple and it’s one click away.

Click on the last icon (text bubble) in the top left panel.

Now select the build and you’ll see all build information.

13. June 2018

Android Studio NDK could not start mips64el-linux-android-strip

If you’re using Android Studio to build C++ application with NDK you might encounter following error during build:

org.gradle.api.tasks.TaskExecutionException: Execution failed for task ':app:transformNativeLibsWithStripDebugSymbolForDebug'.
...
Caused by: java.io.IOException: Cannot run program ".../Android/Sdk/ndk-bundle/toolchains/mips64el-linux-android-4.9/prebuilt/linux-x86_64/bin/mips64el-linux-android-strip": 
error=2, No such file or directory

The problem is caused by the upgrade of NDK in Android Studio to NDK v17. This version has a different structure of tools. It’s not compatible with Android Experimental Plugin v0.11.

The directory which should contain binary of tools contains just file NOTICE-MIPS64:

This mips64el-linux-android-4.9 directory exists to make the NDK compatible with the Android
SDK's Gradle plugin, version 3.0.1 and earlier, which expects the NDK
to have a MIPS64 toolchain directory.

The solution is to download NDK v16 from NDK older releases. Extract it and replace former ndk-bundle directory.

Commands for macOS or Linux users:

cd ~/Android/Sdk
unzip ~/Downloads/android-ndk-r16b-linux-x86_64.zip
mv ndk-bundle ndk-bundle-v17
mv android-ndk-r16b ndk-bundle

If you’re Windows user the location of NDK is typically in your profile AppData\Local\Android. Do not forget to unblock the ZIP after downloading (right click, Properties, Unblock, Ok)

Commands for Windows users:

cd ~\AppData\Local\Android\Sdk
unzip ~\Downloads\android-ndk-r16b-windows-x86_64.zip
mv ndk-bundle ndk-bundle-v17
mv android-ndk-r16b ndk-bundle

Start Android Studio. It should prompt you to update NDK. Do not confirm this request, it will replace NDK with v17. You should see the following screen in SDK Manager:

You can find related sample source code at GitHub in sdl2-android-example – branch gradle-4-using-android-experimental-plugin repository. Further articles about SDL2 and Android are available under the tag SDL2.

Since Google is moving away from Gradle Android Experimental plugin you might consider using Gradle 5 + CMake. The migration is relatively easy and it could save you the trouble of being stuck with old NDK. You need to create CMakeLists.txt instead of build.gradle for C/C++ parts of the code. Example of migration is at GitHub – sdl2-android-example – PR#6.