[Xamarin.Android.Tools.AndroidSdk] Parse the new Android CLI sdkmanager --list format

[mauroa]

Issue

sdkmanager is deprecated in cmdline-tools 23+ and replaced by the new "Android CLI", whose --list output differs from the classic tool:

• a multi-line deprecation banner precedes the sections;
• packages are printed as whitespace-aligned columns instead of the classic path | version | description pipe-delimited table;
• section-header casing differs, such as Available packages: instead of Available Packages:; and
• package IDs use slash form, such as cmdline-tools/latest, instead of the classic cmdline-tools;latest form.

ParseSdkManagerList only understood the pipe-delimited table and case-sensitive headers. Against the new output, every package row was skipped and the installed-package list was empty. Additionally, the slash-form command-line-tools ID was not recognized by EnsureLatestCommandLineToolsAsync.

Impact on the .NET MAUI VS Code extension

The .NET MAUI extension for VS Code uses this library through the MAUI CLI to check Android emulator/AVD prerequisites. The empty parse result caused a false "AVD missing components" warning even on fully configured SDKs. Running the offered install action reported success, but the warning remained because subsequent checks still parsed no packages.

Fix

The current implementation remains compatible with both output formats:

• use the existing pipe-delimited parsing for classic sdkmanager output;
• split Android CLI rows on runs of two or more whitespace characters using a shared compiled regex;
• match package section headers case-insensitively from a shared section definition list; and
• recognize both cmdline-tools;latest and cmdline-tools/latest when resolving the latest command-line-tools package, without globally rewriting package IDs.

Tests

Expanded NUnit coverage verifies:

• classic pipe-delimited installed, available, and update sections;
• Android CLI whitespace-delimited installed, available, and update sections;
• case-insensitive recognition of every section header;
• package IDs containing / and descriptions containing spaces; and
• end-to-end parsing into EnsureLatestCommandLineToolsAsync for both command-line-tools ID formats.

Follow-up

A structured, maintainable package-discovery approach for .NET 12 is tracked by #12472. That investigation covers a Java wrapper around the SDK manager libraries and possible direct Android CLI integration.

---

• Useful description of why the change is necessary.
• Links to issues fixed or follow-up work
• Unit tests

[Copilot]

Pull request overview

This PR updates Xamarin.Android.Tools.AndroidSdk’s sdkmanager --list parsing to handle the newer Android CLI output format (cmdline-tools 23+), where package rows are whitespace-column aligned (no |) and some section headers differ in casing. This prevents installed/available package detection from incorrectly returning empty results on newer SDK toolchains (notably impacting downstream tooling like MAUI’s VS Code extension).

Changes:

• Make section header detection case-insensitive so Available packages: is recognized reliably.
• Parse package rows that have no | by splitting on runs of 2+ whitespace to support the Android CLI column format.
• Add an NUnit regression test covering the Android CLI banner + lowercase header + whitespace columns.

Reviewed changes

Copilot reviewed 2 out of 2 changed files in this pull request and generated 2 comments.

File	Description
src/Xamarin.Android.Tools.AndroidSdk/SdkManager.Packages.cs	Adds Android CLI-compatible parsing by case-insensitive header matching and whitespace-column splitting fallback.
tests/Xamarin.Android.Tools.AndroidSdk-Tests/SdkManagerTests.cs	Adds a regression test validating parsing of installed/available packages from real-world Android CLI-style output.

Suppressed comments (3)

tests/Xamarin.Android.Tools.AndroidSdk-Tests/SdkManagerTests.cs:263

• Avoid using the null-forgiving operator (!) in tests; use an explicit null check (or ?? throw) to keep the test flow-safe.

		var sysImg361 = installed.FirstOrDefault (p => p.Path == "system-images/android-36.1/google_apis/arm64-v8a");
		Assert.IsNotNull (sysImg361);
		Assert.AreEqual ("4.0.0", sysImg361!.Version);

tests/Xamarin.Android.Tools.AndroidSdk-Tests/SdkManagerTests.cs:269

• Avoid using the null-forgiving operator (!) in tests; prefer an explicit null check (or ?? throw) before dereferencing.

		var googleApis = available.FirstOrDefault (p => p.Path == "add-ons/addon-google_apis-google-10");
		Assert.IsNotNull (googleApis);
		Assert.AreEqual ("2.0.0", googleApis!.Version);
		Assert.IsFalse (googleApis.IsInstalled);

tests/Xamarin.Android.Tools.AndroidSdk-Tests/SdkManagerTests.cs:258

• Avoid using the null-forgiving operator (!) in tests; use a null check that makes the failure explicit before dereferencing.

		var sysImg = installed.FirstOrDefault (p => p.Path == "system-images/android-37.0/google_apis_ps16k/arm64-v8a");
		Assert.IsNotNull (sysImg, "16 KB page-size system image should be parsed");
		Assert.AreEqual ("6.0.0", sysImg!.Version);
		Assert.AreEqual ("16 KB Page Size Google APIs ARM 64 v8a System Image", sysImg.Description);

[jonathanpeppers]

Overall, I'm OK to do a one-time fix, but the true fix here would be to create a new Java project that imports SDK manager library from maven and make it able to output something more parseable like JSON. There is not a switch for doing this with sdkmanager.

Here are details on how that could work:

Decompiled Command-line Tools **19.0**:

- `ListAction` loads a typed `RepositoryPackages` model.
- It exposes `getLocalPackages()`, `getRemotePackages()`, `getNewPkgs()`, and `getUpdatedPkgs()`.
- The model is then hard-wired into `TableFormatter`; no hidden JSON/XML switch exists.

**Best option:** write a small Java shim in package `com.android.sdklib.tool.sdkmanager`, reuse `SdkManagerCliSettings`, execute the load, then serialize `RepositoryPackages` with bundled Gson. This preserves channels, custom sources, obsolete filtering, proxies, and SDK parsing without scraping output. It does rely on internal APIs and may need updates with future command-line tools.

Other options:
1. **Installed packages only:** parse each `**\package.xml`. This is structured XML, but older/corrupt packages may require `source.properties` fallback.
2. **CLI parsing:** non-verbose output is explicitly joined with `" | "`, but values are not escaped.
3. **Remote XML directly:** possible, but undesirable because packages come from multiple repository feeds and require channel/host filtering.

The Java shim is the cleanest machine-readable solution if this needs to be reliable.

[jonathanpeppers]

@mauroa another idea, there is an android CLI now.

We could lean into using that more.

[jonathanpeppers]

Future .NET 12 investigation is tracked in #12472.

[jonathanpeppers]

/review

[github-actions]

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[github-actions]

❌ Reject

Findings: 1 error · 0 warnings · 0 suggestions.

The parser correctly recognizes the new whitespace table and preserves classic pipe-delimited behavior, with focused coverage for sections and updates. However, the new CLI emits slash-form package IDs while the existing command-line-tools update path requires canonical semicolon IDs, so the parsed result breaks EnsureLatestCommandLineToolsAsync on the very cmdline-tools versions this PR targets.

CI is still in progress; the completed Android Tools Tests Mac and CLA checks are passing.

Generated by Android PR Reviewer for #12466 · gpt56 · 75.6 AIC · ⌖ 8.89 AIC · ⊞ 25.7K
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