fix(cli): Android SDK auto-installation failing on Windows

[ndonkoHenri]

Fixes #6522

Problem

On a Windows machine without an Android SDK, flet build apk did not install the SDK: it downloaded the command-line tools, declined every SDK license, installed none of the packages, and still reported Android SDK installed ✅. Flutter then failed with No Android SDK found.

The installer answered the license prompts with cmd.exe /C echo y | sdkmanager.bat …. The space before the pipe is part of what cmd's echo prints, so sdkmanager read "y " and treated it as "no". sdkmanager exits with 0 when it skips a package or when licenses are declined, and the installer only checked the exit code. A single answer could not have accepted the licenses anyway: --licenses asks once before showing them and then once per license.

Fixing that exposed a second problem, which affects every OS. cmdline-tools;latest now resolves to version 23.0 of the command-line tools, which replaces sdkmanager with a wrapper around Google's new Android CLI. The installer installed cmdline-tools;latest first and then used its sdkmanager for the remaining packages. The wrapper:

• downloads the Android CLI (about 235 MB) into ~/.android on first use;
• ignores --licenses;
• rejects --no-metrics, so the Android CLI collects usage metrics by default;
• on Windows, splits package names such as platforms;android-35 at the ;, because cmd treats ; as an argument separator, so those packages are never found;
• on Windows 11 ARM64, where the x64-only android.exe runs emulated, exits with 0xC0000409 on every run, even when the package was installed. x64 Windows is untested.

Changes

• sdkmanager runs directly on every OS, with its answers written to its standard input. This replaces the cmd.exe /C echo y | and sh -c 'yes | …' pipelines. processes.run() gets an input parameter for this.
• The installer fails when a package directory or licenses/android-sdk-license is missing after sdkmanager returns, instead of trusting the exit code.
• cmdline-tools;latest is no longer installed, and the pinned command-line tools (12.0) that the installer downloads are preferred over latest when both are present. Flutter only needs a cmdline-tools directory, of any version.
• Changelog entry.

Not in this PR: an SDK whose only command-line tools are 23.0, for example Android Studio's "Command-line Tools (latest)", still goes through the wrapper when a package is missing, as on 1.0.1. Installing the pinned tools in that case, without prompting users whose SDK is already complete, needs a separate change to install().

Testing

• Windows 11 ARM64 VM, installing into an empty folder with AndroidSDK.install(), which is what flet build apk runs when no SDK is found:
  • 1.0.1 reproduced the issue. sdkmanager's stdin received b'y \r\n', and only the downloaded command-line tools ended up on disk, with no licenses accepted, yet install() returned normally.
  • This branch installed platform-tools, platforms;android-35 and build-tools;34.0.0 and accepted all 7 licenses, with every sdkmanager call going through the pinned 12.0 tools. It also completed an SDK that already had 23.0 as latest.
  • Calling the 23.0 sdkmanager.bat and android.exe directly on the same VM confirmed the ; splitting and the 0xC0000409 exit codes.
• macOS, with the real sdkmanager in throwaway SDK folders: an install into an empty folder passes, and feeding the same "y " answer makes the installer raise Error installing Android SDK package "platform-tools" instead of returning.
• The flet-cli tests and ruff pass.

Test code

import os
import tempfile
from pathlib import Path

from flet_cli.utils.android_sdk import AndroidSDK
from flet_cli.utils.jdk import install_jdk

sdk = Path(tempfile.mkdtemp())  # an empty folder is handled like a missing SDK
os.environ["ANDROID_HOME"] = str(sdk)
AndroidSDK(install_jdk(print), print).install()
print(sorted(p.name for p in sdk.iterdir()))

Summary by Sourcery

Fix Android SDK installation reliability across platforms by using the pinned SDK tools, accepting licenses through standard input, and validating installation results.

Bug Fixes:

• Fix Android SDK auto-installation on Windows by reliably accepting licenses and verifying that required packages and license files were actually installed.

Enhancements:

• Prefer the pinned command-line tools over the newer latest tools to avoid incompatible SDK manager behavior across platforms.
• Support sending input to subprocesses for interactive command execution.

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Copilot review overview

🟡 Changes recommended

The implementation appears sound, but GitHub currently reports unresolved merge conflicts.

Review effort: Balanced
Findings: None

What changed in this PR

Fixes Android SDK auto-installation by reliably accepting licenses and validating installed packages.

Changes:

• Sends SDK manager responses through standard input.
• Prefers pinned command-line tools 12.0 and verifies installation results.
• Adds the 1.0.2 changelog entry.

File	Description
processes.py	Adds subprocess input support.
android_sdk.py	Fixes SDK package and license installation.
CHANGELOG.md	Documents the Windows fix.

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