PLEASE! … create a how-to-tutorial on Chaquopy's/briefcases' use of external binaries in Android apps

[clemsam]

On my research how to get sound into an (existing) briefcase-Android project's app (at Stack-O) I got the recommendation from BeeWare's new apiarist Malcolm Smith (creator of the amazing Chaquopy Python APIs) to use his API and SoundPool for my project.
In Tutorial 6 there is stated quite definitely "you can only use pure Python packages" and "This means that libraries like numpy, scikit-learn, or cryptography can be used in a desktop app, but not a mobile app."

But fortunately briefcases FAQ mentions the "Chaquopy package index" website where you can find a list of nearly a hundred packages – among them:
numpy, scikit-learn, and cryptography …

As a non-professional hobbyist and Python-enthusiast I'd really, really appreciate it very-very-very much if someone could develop and post a simple example/tutorial here at beeware on how to go about including & implementing e.g. matplotlib into an Android app, covering items like:
– pip --… install matplotlib from Chaquopy's repository (binary wheels)
– editing build.gradle, requirements.txt (and whereever else necessary)
– importing matplotlib into app.py and a simple use of it
– whatever else is relevant to an app
(– maybe also: how to detect which version is required ?)

Thanks a lot! Clemsam

[mhsmith]

Yes, the tutorial page is out of date: you can now use all the Chaquopy binary packages on Android.

If your app uses Briefcase, just add the package to the requires section of your pyproject.toml file, as shown in the BeeWare tutorial, and Briefcase will deal with all the details of pip and build.gradle. You'll need to be using Briefcase 0.3.10 or later, and preferably run briefcase create with Python 3.8. As you can see from the package index, Python 3.9 and 3.10 have a smaller selection of packages, while Python 3.11 has almost nothing yet.

Or if your app uses Chaquopy without Briefcase, follow the instructions in the Chaquopy documentation here.

[aryan1165]

Hi @mhsmith, I have build wheels for Ctranslate2 and have raised a PR in chaquopy's repository, but it is not merged, How can i use the local copy of chaquopy repository to integrate with briefcase and integrate with android mobile devices.

[mhsmith]

See #1270. At least for Android, the "URL" can also be a local path.