Pure Golang Android Service

[rlai...@gmail.com]

Hello Everyone,

I'm curious if it is possible to write an all-golang background service for android. Reviewing https://godoc.org/golang.org/x/mobile/app  it seems we may only have options to launch a golang android application from user interaction in the foreground.

Any insight would be greatly appreciated!

[Daniel Skinner]

The short answer is no. This isn't a limitation of gomobile but rather of the platform. At minimum, you would need a Service class implementation to load output lib of gobind and perform work. The longer answer is you could, but not in a way that's easily redistributable and the exact details would be dependent on the device manufacturer and model.

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[C Banning]

You can run linux-arm services on Android but it's a bit of a kludge.  

1. root the device

2. install a console app that gives you "su" access

3. install your binary in a file-system with execute permission

4. manually start your service: > my_app &

You'll be missing a lot of useful commands - iinitd, grep, etc. - by default; so you've got to add additional utilities to make it really useful.  But I've done this to demo Go services running on an Android media server.  (The Raspberry Pi 2 Model B will let you deploy to a linux-arm environment comparable to many Android devices effortlessly.)

[Seth Moeckel]

Has anything here changed? Given that Go mobile apps are really just Go apps, I wonder if a service could be made by simply having the correct manifest...

[Daniel Skinner]

The manifest can specify hooks for Service implementations, such as to start on-boot, but the platform still requires the implementation of the Service class. One could write a generic NativeService implementation for easy reuse and launching of native processes, but otherwise nothing has changed with the Android platform that I'm aware of.

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