Android

From Lazarus wiki
Jump to navigationJump to search

Android target

Currently support for the Android target is present in the trunk (development) version 2.7.1 of FPC.

Supported CPUs:

  • ARM (CPU_TARGET=arm)
  • x86 (CPU_TARGET=i386)
  • MIPS (CPU_TARGET=mipsel)
  • JVM (not discussed on this page)

Android NDK

You need to download and install Android NDK in order to get the cross binutils that compile programs for the android target on your current machine.

Download Android NDK using this link: http://developer.android.com/tools/sdk/ndk/index.html

Extract it to some folder.

FPC sources

Check out the latest trunk sources of FPC using the following command:

svn co http://svn.freepascal.org/svn/fpc/trunk fpcsrc

Now you have the latest compiler sources in the fpcsrc sub-folder.

Building cross compiler

You need to have a working installation of FPC 2.6.2 compiler in order to create the cross-compiler.

This tutorial describes how to build a cross-compiler for the arm-android target on Windows. But the tutorial can be applied to any system with small obvious modifications.

Use the similar approach to build a i368-android or mipsel-android cross-compiler.

Let's assume the following paths:

  • Android NDK path: C:\Program Files\Android SDK\android-ndk-r8d
  • FPC svn sources path: C:\Develop\FPC\fpcsrc
  • The cross-compiler installation path: C:\Develop\FPC\pp

Add path to Android binutils to the PATH environment variable. In this tutorial the path is: C:\Program Files\Android SDK\android-ndk-r8d\toolchains\arm-linux-androideabi-4.7\prebuilt\windows\bin

Open the Command line prompt and cd to the root of FPC sources folder: C:\Develop\FPC\fpcsrc

Execute the following command:

make clean crossall crossinstall OS_TARGET=android CPU_TARGET=arm INSTALL_PREFIX=C:\Develop\FPC\pp

After that you should have the cross-compiler and units installed in folder C:\Develop\FPC\pp By default all units are built with -O2 optimization switch. Also software FPU emulation is used for ARM CPU by default. If you need to specify different compiler options for building, use the CROSSOPT parameter. For example if you wish to build units with hardware FPU support use the following command:

make clean crossall crossinstall OS_TARGET=android CPU_TARGET=arm CROSSOPT="-CfVFPV3" INSTALL_PREFIX=C:\Develop\FPC\pp

Now create a new fpc.cfg file in folder C:\Develop\FPC\pp\bin\i386-win32 and paste into it the following text:

-FuC:\Develop\FPC\pp\units\$FPCTARGET\*

#ifdef android
#ifdef cpuarm
-FlC:\Program Files\Android SDK\android-ndk-r8d\platforms\android-14\arch-arm\usr\lib
#endif
#ifdef cpu386
-FlC:\Program Files\Android SDK\android-ndk-r8d\platforms\android-14\arch-x86\usr\lib
#endif
#endif

Compiling programs

Now, when the cross-compiler is ready, you can compile programs for the Android target:

C:\Develop\FPC\pp\bin\i386-win32\ppcrossarm -Tandroid testprog.pas

Developer notes

  • The compiler does NOT define LINUX during compilation! It defines UNIX and ANDROID though.

(Background: Android is not completely Linux compatible, e.g. a few syscalls and default library functions e.g. in pthreads, ... are missing, and it generally behaves different in a few ways. This makes the amount of defines manageable by avoiding if defined(linux) and not defined(android). Actually, the list of things that are different is only growing).

  • Shared libraries do not have argc/argv available (i.e. set to 0 or nil) because of Android.
  • The selection of compiled packages is mostly driven by what libraries are shipped by default on Android, i.e. not much.

Known issues

  • clocale unit is not implemented yet.

External Links