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ANDROID TRICKS Nirnimesh

nirnimesh-(at)-gmail.com
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This is my personal blog. The
Tips & Tricks on Android views expressed on these pages
are mine alone and not those of my
employer.
Wednesday, February 25, 2009
I also write
Hello World C program using Android
Toolchain Tips and Tricks on Mac
Display X windows on X11.app
from another linux box
I had reported earlier how I had gotten a C Hello World statically-linked
2 years ago
program running on my Android phone using CodeSourcery's toolchain (on
linux). Today I got a dynamically-linked Hello World program running on the
phone, compiled using Android's prebuilt toolchain from the source. Blog Archive
▼ 2009 (12)
It's well known that Android uses a stripped down version of libc, called
► June (1)
bionic. When you compile your program with static linking, you don't use ► March (1)
bionic because well, you linked statically. This is non-ideal. You want to ▼ February (5)
use the bionic library on the phone, and besides you want to compile using Hello World C program using
Android Toolchain
Android's prebuilt cross-compiler arm-eabi-gcc
cp on Android
Screenshots on Android
If you are anxious to get things working, use agcc, a perl wrapper over Hello World in C on Android
arm-eabi-gcc that sets up everything for you so that you can just: Installing non-Market Apps on
Android Phone
$ agcc hello.c -o hello ► January (5)
and the resulting binary (hello) just works. Of course you should have the
directory containing arm-eabi-gcc in your PATH for agcc to work. Followers
Let's explore a bit deeper. But let me first simplify my hello program to Follow
contain just a main with Google Friend Connect

$ cat hello.c int main(int argc, char* argv[]) { Followers (29) More »
return 0;
}

The minimal set of flags to pass to arm-eabi-gcc to get this working is:
$ arm-eabi-gcc -o hello hello.c -Wl,-rpath- Already a member? Sign in

link=/Users/nirnimesh/NIR/android/mydroid/cupcake/out/
target/product/generic/obj/lib -
L/Users/nirnimesh/NIR/android/mydroid/cupcake/out/targ
et/product/generic/obj/lib -nostdlib
/Users/nirnimesh/NIR/android/mydroid/cupcake/out/targe
t/product/generic/obj/lib/crtbegin_dynamic.o -lc

Here /Users/nirnimesh/NIR/android/mydroid/cupcake is the

root of my Android source.

$ file hello
hello: ELF 32-bit LSB executable, ARM, version 1
(SYSV), dynamically linked (uses shared libs), not
stripped

Note that the executable binary is dynamically linked.

If you leave out -Wl,-rpath-

link=/Users/nirnimesh/NIR/android/mydroid/cupcake/out/
target/product/generic/obj/lib you get
/Users/nirnimesh/NIR/android/mydroid/cupcake/prebuilt/
darwin-x86/toolchain/arm-eabi-
4.2.1/bin/../lib/gcc/arm-eabi/4.2.1/../../../../arm-
eabi/bin/ld: warning: libdl.so, needed by
/Users/nirnimesh/NIR/android/mydroid/cupcake/out/targe
t/product/generic/obj/lib/libc.so, not found (try
using -rpath or -rpath-link)
/Users/nirnimesh/NIR/android/mydroid/cupcake/out/targe
t/product/generic/obj/lib/libc.so: undefined reference
to `dl_unwind_find_exidx' collect2: ld returned 1 exit
status

If you leave out -

L/Users/nirnimesh/NIR/android/mydroid/cupcake/out/targ
et/product/generic/obj/lib you get
/Users/nirnimesh/NIR/android/mydroid/cupcake/prebuilt/
darwin-x86/toolchain/arm-eabi-
4.2.1/bin/../lib/gcc/arm-eabi/4.2.1/../../../../arm-
eabi/bin/ld: cannot find -lc collect2: ld returned 1
exit status

If you leave out -nostdlib you get

/Users/nirnimesh/NIR/android/mydroid/cupcake/prebuilt/
darwin-x86/toolchain/arm-eabi-
darwin-x86/toolchain/arm-eabi-
4.2.1/bin/../lib/gcc/arm-eabi/4.2.1/../../../../arm-
eabi/bin/ld: crt0.o: No such file: No such file or
directory collect2: ld returned 1 exit status

If you leave out

/Users/nirnimesh/NIR/android/mydroid/cupcake/out/targe
t/product/generic/obj/lib/crtbegin_dynamic.o you get
/Users/nirnimesh/NIR/android/mydroid/cupcake/prebuilt/
darwin-x86/toolchain/arm-eabi-
4.2.1/bin/../lib/gcc/arm-eabi/4.2.1/../../../../arm-
eabi/bin/ld: crt0.o: No such file: No such file or
directory collect2: ld returned 1 exit status

And finally, f you leave out -lc your compilation fails with:
/Users/nirnimesh/NIR/android/mydroid/cupcake/out/targe
t/product/generic/obj/lib/crtbegin_dynamic.o: In
function `_start': bionic/libc/arch-
arm/bionic/crtbegin_dynamic.S:(.text+0x10): undefined
reference to `__libc_init' collect2: ld returned 1 exit
status

So far we've been able to compile C programs using Androids toolchain and
run on the phone.
To summarize, it's the most convenient to use agcc as the compiler so
you don't have to bother.
Posted by Nirnimesh at 1:16 AM

17 comments:

sheiff said...

Wow!

I just need it now =)

Thousands of thanks!

Thursday, February 26, 2009 1:53:00 AM PST

jervis said...

thanks very much, I've done now.

Wednesday, March 11, 2009 10:10:00 AM PDT

neiln said...

I followed those steps and run it on the emulator/cupcake branch. It did

not work. I got file not found.
Neil

Saturday, March 28, 2009 8:56:00 PM PDT

Jared said...

Awesome man, keep up the updates. I just got my dev phone and have
used a few of your posts already.

Monday, April 6, 2009 3:12:00 PM PDT

Yarx said...
This post has been removed by the author.
Wednesday, April 22, 2009 7:56:00 PM PDT

Jayden's Mobile World said...

Thank you so much. It helped me a lot.

Friday, May 15, 2009 8:49:00 AM PDT

むらかみ たくや said...

I created similar tool named 'droid-wrapper'. It can be used for generic

software using 'configure' script.

I published it at http://github.com/tmurakam/droid-wrapper/

Thursday, July 23, 2009 12:21:00 AM PDT

StyXman said...

just like neiln, I get:

# ./hw
./hw: not found

my compile options add a couple of -I because the compiler didn't find

the headers. also, trying to compile the cupcake from sources (pulled
via git) does not compile bionic. do you know anything about that?

Friday, November 27, 2009 11:54:00 AM PST

Pedro J. Estébanez said...

For those with the "not found" problem:

That's because you have to specify the path to the Android dynamic
linker:

arm-eabi-gcc [...] -Wl,-rpath-link=...,-dynamic-linker=/system/bin/linker

I've had a hard time with this issue, too.

Saturday, December 5, 2009 7:24:00 AM PST

tarek.attia said...

Hi,You helped me so much :)

But I developed an application using threads,and made the make file

as you stated ,but each time I try to run it on the target ,it arisen a
linking error that tells me that it doesn't can to link "libpthread.s0.6",,I
know that android uses different libc implementation bionic,,How can I
resolve this matter ??

Any help will be appreciated :)

Monday, December 21, 2009 2:11:00 PM PST

Winston said...

Using the NDK r3 in Android 2.1, I was able to compile with the
following (from the ndk directory):

./build/prebuilt/darwin-x86/arm-eabi-4.2.1/bin/arm-eabi-gcc -o hello
hello.c -Wl,-rpath-link=./build/platforms/android-5/arch-arm/usr/lib/,-
dynamic-linker=/system/bin/linker -L./build/platforms/android-5/arch-
arm/usr/lib/ ./build/platforms/android-5/arch-
arm/usr/lib/crtbegin_dynamic.o -I./build/platforms/android-5/arch-
arm/usr/include -nostdlib -lc

Don't know if it works -- I don't have an Android device, just the SDK
emulator!

Monday, March 22, 2010 3:13:00 PM PDT

Danny said...
This post has been removed by the author.
Tuesday, April 13, 2010 5:44:00 AM PDT

Danny said...

hi, i am trying to compile Hello.c same as above

arm-eabi-gcc -o hello hello.c -Wl,-rpath-

link=/home/builds/android/out/target/product/generic/obj/lib -
L/home/builds/android/out/target/product/generic/obj/lib -nostdlib
/home/builds/android/out/target/product/generic/obj/lib/crtbegin_dynami
c.o -lc

I am getting below error, can any one help me

/home/builds/android/prebuilt/linux-x86/toolchain/arm-eabi-
4.4.0/bin/../lib/gcc/arm-eabi/4.4.0/../../../../arm-eabi/bin/ld: cannot find -
lc
collect2: ld returned 1 exit status

Tuesday, April 13, 2010 5:47:00 AM PDT

Vince said...

I just installed the new NDK (android-ndk-r3)...before which I was using

CodeSourcery's toolchain.

When I try to compile from command line, I get the following:

main.c:14:24: error: sys/socket.h: No such file or directory

main.c: In function 'main':
main.c:31: error: 'pthread_t' undeclared (first use in this function)
main.c:31: error: (Each undeclared identifier is reported only once
main.c:31: error: for each function it appears in.)
main.c:31: error: expected ';' before 'listenerThread'
main.c:38: error: 'listenerThread' undeclared (first use in this function)
main.c: In function 'openSocket':
 main.c:53: error: 'AF_INET' undeclared (first use in this function)
main.c:53: error: 'SOCK_STREAM' undeclared (first use in this
function)

And so on. The NDK cannot find the #includes.

Any way around this? With CodeSourcery I was able to compile from
command line very simply:

arm-none-linux-eabi-gcc -static -pthread main.c -o main

It is not working as I expected. Please advise!

Thank you.

Thursday, April 29, 2010 12:02:00 PM PDT

Lunkwill said...

The agcc wrapper doesn't work with android-ndk-r4b due to changed

paths. I hacked it enough to get a simple printf("Hello, world!") to
compile. Modified agcc here:

https://docs.google.com/leaf?
id=0B8R6VSvTZHZWYWI5OTY3NDgtNmFmMS00OTY2LWI1MmMtYT
c0ZmZkZDBmZjk2&hl=en

Sunday, August 15, 2010 5:43:00 PM PDT

Vlad said...

Here is another copy of patched up agcc script. http://bit.ly/91wnsa

@lunkwill You've beaten me by a few days, unfortunately your link is

not valid. Could you fix it?

Wednesday, August 18, 2010 5:07:00 PM PDT

Radu Motisan said...

This article is old. You now can use the NDK to compile a native C
code file, not only JNI libraries.

Here's how to do it:

http://www.pocketmagic.net/?p=1462

Hope this helps.

Thursday, November 18, 2010 1:57:00 AM PST

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