[Python-Dev] Support of the Android platform

[Xavier de Gaye]

On 12/14/2017 02:59 PM, Victor Stinner wrote:
 > It seems like Android is evolving quickly, would say quicker than
 > Python releases. I'm asking if it's a good idea to put a recipe aside
 > the Python source code for one specific Android API version? Would it
 > still make sense to build for NDK v14 in 2 or 5 years?

NDK 14 has been released in march 2017 and the latest release is NDK 16. There are sometimes major changes between releases and I think it is critical to ensure that the builds all use the same NDK 
release for that reason. Supporting another NDK release is just a substitution in one of the files of the build system and I am sure that in 2 or 5 years there would have been a core developer smart 
enough to make that substitution (this could even have been me, I will only be 71 years old in 5 years :-)). Anyway if this is a problem, this should have been discussed in a review of the PR.

There are concerns, including a concern raised by me, about supporting Android with that build system or to supporting Android at all. It has been interesting and gratifying to work on this build 
system and to get the Python test suite running on Android without failures. Given these concerns and the lack of interest in the support of Android it is time for me to switch to something else, 
maybe improve the bdb module, why not ?

Xavier