Compiling and Installing App Inventor on Ubuntu

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App Inventor is a simple Android programming tool developed by MIT. By dragging and dropping objects on a webpage and setting up code in a flowchart-like manner, you can generate your own Android applications. If you install App Inventor's companion software on your Android phone or tablet, you can modify the interface on your computer and see changes reflected instantly on your mobile device.

MIT provides an online version of App Inventor accessible through email registration. However, their website runs on Google App Engine. As we all know, Google's services have poor accessibility in China. Therefore, it's best to install it locally for uninterrupted programming.

1. Download the source code

First, you'll need a GitHub account. Visit
https://github.com/mit-cml/appinventor-sources
and click "Fork" in the top-right corner.

Then, open a terminal in Ubuntu and enter:

sudo apt-get install git openjdk-7-jdk ant
git clone https://github.com/(your GitHub username)/appinventor-sources.git
# 由于 GitHub 到天朝访问同样悲摧，上面这句可能要执行1h以上
cd appinventor-sources
git remote add upstream https://github.com/mit-cml/appinventor-sources.git
cp sample-.gitignore .gitignore

Visit
https://cloud.google.com/appengine/downloads
to download Google App Engine SDK for Java. Extract it, rename the folder to appengine-java-sdk, and copy it to the appinventor-sources directory created earlier.

2. Start compiling

cd appinventor-sources
ant

Compilation takes 2-10 minutes. On my 3rd-gen i5 CPU, it took 3 minutes.

3. Launch on Linux

Create start.sh with the following content:

#!/bin/sh
appengine-java-sdk/bin/dev_appserver.sh --port=8888 --address=0.0.0.0 appinventor/appengine/build/war/ &
cd appinventor/buildserver
ant RunLocalBuildServer &
cd ../..

Run in terminal:

./start.sh

Wait about 1 minute for startup, then access App Inventor at http://127.0.0.1:8888.

4. Launch on Windows (interface only, no APK build server)

Install JRE on Windows. Create start.bat in the appinventor-sources folder with:

appengine-java-sdk/bin/dev_appserver.cmd --port=8888 --address=0.0.0.0 appinventor/appengine/build/war/

Double-click to run. After 1 minute, access http://127.0.0.1:8888.