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Does Google still support SL4A for Android.

I have created an apk file for SL4A which is A6 using the old source code, could anyone kindly let me know if the source code for SL4A is available for the latest Android version(A16>).

Jegadeeshan
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Google never actually supported SL4A. The original developer, Damon Kohler, worked at Google, but SL4A was his own project.

I got the impression that Google weren't thrilled about SL4A on Android, for security, stability and performance reasons, but had no problem with Kohler working on it independently. I'm reading between the lines here though, so could be wrong.

The latest version of SL4A should work on more recent Android versions; you just wont have support for new Android API features.

There was at least one other lead maintainer after Kohler, but development was intermittent for a long time, and ground to a complete halt years ago. I know that they struggled to find Java developers that cared about Python on Android.

The SL4A Google Group still exists. You may still find some support there.

Carl Smith
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  • Why do you think Kivy is not a good solution for creating Python apps for Android? – brousch May 07 '14 at 13:21
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    It's good for some stuff I guess, but it doesn't actually run Python on Android. They claim that, but it's a bit shaky. It lets you write Python on a desktop OS, then compile an APK, which you then install on Android. But then hello-world becomes a build process involving Eclipse, Android emulators, USB leads and dev tools. It's not a little file on your device that your device can run. Kivy also lacks an Android API. You can't really access a device's hardware; you just run Python with a Kivy GUI on the touchscreen. If you want to send a text or read a sensor or something, it's all messy. – Carl Smith May 08 '14 at 01:28
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    It sounds like your experience with Kivy is a couple of years out of date. You can code Python directly on Android using the Kivy Launcher app (in Play). This is similar to the SL4A experience. You can also do it with a little trickery for a stand-alone APK. Eclipse is not needed to compile your Kivy APKs. Buildozer makes the compilation process quite painless. Kivy can access most of the Android API via Pyjnius. In fact it has access to more of the API than SL4A. Plyer is another Kivy project which is bringing the API down to an easier-to-use level. – brousch May 09 '14 at 12:43
  • I'll have to take your word for it on the native Kivy Interpreter. Pyjnius is the mess I was on about. I'm glad it's improved. – Carl Smith May 09 '14 at 16:05
  • Note: The original answer mentioned Kivy, and that I didn't think it was a very good alternative to SL4A, but that part was removed in a later edit. – Carl Smith Jul 26 '20 at 01:16