Chaquopy

This version fixes the following bugs:

• Fix pip issues involving packages with optional native components (e.g. websockets).
• Work around inability of Android dynamic linker on API 22 and older to load multiple modules with the same basename (details here).
• Fix ctypes.pythonapi and sys.abiflags, and provide partial implementation of sysconfig.get_config_vars.
• Fix native crash in lrintf / feholdexcept / fegetenv (Crystax issue #1369).
• Fix pkgutil.get_data when used with extractPackages, and improve extractPackages performance.

The following packages have been added to the repository since the previous version:

• h5py
• kiwisolver
• matplotlib
• opencv-python
• pillow
• subprocess32

This version adds the following feature:

• Add fast conversions between Python bytes/bytearray and Java byte[] (#41).

And fixes the following pip-related issues:

• Make pip evaluate environment markers (PEP 508) and data-requires-python attributes (PEP 503) against the target platform rather than the build platform.
• Make pip only prioritize native wheels (not pure-Python wheels) over sdists of a newer version.
• Fix pip issues when multiple packages provide the same directory or filename.
• Improve pip error messages when packages attempt to build native code.

Also, the following packages have recently been added to the repository:

• cffi
• cryptography
• grpcio
• netifaces
• scandir

This release adds the following feature:

• The new methods Python.getPlatform and AndroidPlatform.getApplication allow the application context to be retrieved from anywhere.

And includes the following bugfixes:

This release adds support for installing pure-Python sdists. This means that all pure-Python packages on PyPI should now work with Chaquopy, whether they have wheels available or not. If you have any difficulty installing a package, please report it at our issue tracker.

Other changes:

• The Python major version of buildPython is now required to be the same as that of the app itself when using pip, and the default value of buildPython has been changed accordingly.
• Fix imp.find_module and imp.load_module.
• Implement implicit namespace packages on Python 3 (PEP 420).
• Add partial support for .pth files. Only the execution of lines starting with import is currently implemented: all other lines are ignored.
• Add message explaining how to show full pip output in Android Studio 3.1’s new Build window.
• Fix “registering invalid inputs” warning in Android Studio 3.1.

This version adds support for Android Gradle plugin version 3.1, and removes support for version 2.2. If you’re still using Android Studio 2.2, then we highly recommend that you upgrade to version 3.1. Our testing shows that it builds apps more than twice as fast, whether you’re using Chaquopy or not.

Other changes:

• Add Python versions 2.7.15 and 3.6.5, and fix a few lesser-used standard library modules.
• Update to pip version 10.0.1.
• Build reliability fixes, including one for over-strict metadata parsing.
• Further build speed improvements.
• Improve app startup speed where a requirement is reinstalled at the same version as before.

We’re happy to announce that, due to popular demand, the following packages are now available for Chaquopy 2.1 and later:

• SciPy
• scikit-learn
• pandas

NumPy has also been updated to the newest version, and is now built to work with OpenBLAS. As a result, many calculations are significantly faster than in the previous build.

For a full list of native packages currently available for Chaquopy, see the repository. In addition, Chaquopy of course supports all pure-Python packages which are available as wheels on PyPI.

If your favorite package still isn’t available, please let us know!

This version is focused on improving support for Python requirements which are very large, or contain native code. Several new packages have been added to the repository as a result: see the next post for a list.

List of changes:

• External shared library dependencies can now be loaded.
• pip install performance has been improved.

This version fixes the following bugs:

• Fix a crash reported on various devices, especially Samsung Galaxy J series phones.
• Disable upgrade notification from bundled copy of pip.

It also makes available the following fixes in the package repository:

• Fix NumPy dependency on libc functions not present in API level 17 and earlier.
• Remove debugging information from native modules. All native packages benefit from this, but especially NumPy, which is now smaller by 4 MB per ABI.

The major version number is incremented due to the following incompatible change:

• The import hook now only looks up names in Java if they failed to import from Python. This significantly speeds up import of large Python packages. However, it means that importing a name which exists in both languages is no longer reported as an error: instead, the value from Python will be returned.

Other changes:

The Chaquopy SDK is now out of beta and is considered ready for production use. Thanks to all those who tested it during the beta period: your free license keys will remain valid for all future versions.

We’re looking forward to continuing to improve Chaquopy in the future, but we’d like to hear what features are most important to you. Do you want better performance, or are there any Python packages you’d like to be made available? Would you benefit from better Android Studio integration, or would you be more interested in a way to create apps in Python directly on an Android device?

Please let us know your thoughts by email or on our GitHub page.