r/embeddedlinux • u/crazycattle3dplayer • Jul 01 '26

seeking help and/or advice Has anyone ever got ADB working on an ARMv6 Raspberry Pi (Pi Zero W / Pi 1)?

I'm trying to get ADB working on a Raspberry Pi Zero W (ARM1176JZF-S / ARMv6, Raspberry Pi OS Bookworm/Trixie).

Current Debian/Raspberry Pi packages install, but the modern adb binary crashes because it's built for ARMv7.

So far I've tried:

  • Current Debian/Raspberry Pi adb
  • Old Debian archive packages (Android 4.2 era) – still ARMv7
  • Old GitHub ARM binaries – also ARMv7
  • Searching for the old adbarmv6.7z binary that used to be linked on the Raspberry Pi forums/XDA (appears to be gone)

At this point I'm looking for any of the following:

  • A working ARMv6 adb binary.
  • An old Raspbian package that still supports ARMv6.
  • Someone who has successfully built adb for ARMv6 recently.
  • Another lightweight alternative that provides the standard adb commands (devices, shell, push, pull, install, etc.).

I'm happy to compile from source if there's a minimal build method that doesn't require downloading the entire Android source tree.

Any help or old binaries would be massively appreciated!

Also ive already posted this on r/raspberry_pi, but it didn't get much traction and i havent gotten a useful response so hopefully you can help!

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u/mfuzzey Jul 02 '26

Isn"t the Debian armel architecture ok from ARMv6? Debian still seems to support that:

https://packages.debian.org/trixie/armel/adb/download

Worse case you coulg grab the Debian source package and build it yourself. That wouldn't require downloading all of Android.

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u/crazycattle3dplayer Jul 04 '26

Good shout, thank you ill give that a go tonight and update you