Development

It is strongly advised that you build NextUI via Docker instead of using a direct build. By using Docker, you significantly reduce the number of differences between your system and the system that developers are building on which reduces issues where the system builds fine for one person while failing for another. If you need any help, please use this setup - otherwise you are on your own.

System requirements🔗

Linux Operating System capable of running docker
At least 10 GB of available disk space
For now, a arm64 host system is required.

sudo apt-get install build-essential zip zipmerge

Optional: Install native library dependencies for `desktop` target🔗

Some parts of the development process are easier when you can build a target for your host instead of a handheld device. If you want to use the desktop platform target, you need to install additional dependencies (to match what would be present on the handheld device):

sudo apt-get install libsqlite3-dev libzip-dev libsdl2-dev libsdl2-image-dev libsdl2-ttf-dev
or
brew install sdl2_image sdl2_ttf libzip

After that, you can build a partial NextUI flavour that works on your host machine:

make setup common PLATFORM=desktop

The main repo contains a few templated launch configs for VS Code that you can modify and extend to fit your needs.

Building on macOS🔗

NextUI is build using gcc. In order for you to develop on macOS, you will have to take some extra steps:

brew install gcc gdb make
# This will link the brew-sourced binaries to /usr/local/bin in order
# to avoid clashes with Apple clang that might also be installed on
# your machine (and masquerading as gcc):
<local NextUI repo>/workspace/desktop/macos_create_gcc_symlinks.sh

Step 2: Install Docker🔗

Docker Version	Instructions
Docker Engine Only (Does not include Docker Desktop)	https://docs.docker.com/engine/install/
Docker Desktop (Also includes Docker Engine)	https://docs.docker.com/desktop/setup/install/linux/

Step 3: Grab the latest source code🔗

git clone https://github.com/LoveRetro/NextUI.git
cd NextUI

Step 4: Build the complete package with emulators from source🔗

This is not required on every build. In fact, you can normally skip this step if you've done it already.

This will grab the latest revisions of all included emulators and build them from scratch. Depending on your system, this will take a good amount of time. After completeing this once, it is generally fine to build without emulator cores (unless you want to pull in the latest and greatest changes).

make all COMPILE_CORES=true

For followup builds with cores in place:

make all

Step 5: Deploy to your device🔗

If your device is connected via USB, you can deploy your build straight away, without any manual copying. First, make sure your device is actually discoverable:

adb devices

To deploy your build and install it:

make deploy

This is equivalent to a "quick update" via OTA, i.e. it only deploys the MinUI.zip to update the base UI.