Android NDK - getting STLPort up and running

If you want to get STLPort running with the Android NDK, you'll have a bit of work to do; especially if using Cygwin under Windows.

First, visit http://umbel.mooo.com/ and get the STLPort version from John Ripley (great job, John!). If you're a cygwin user, you'll first need to remember to install the git package.

Next thing is to copy the files to a place that works for you. On my system, I copied the files into my c:\android-ndk-1.5_r1 folder, and then moved the two hello-stl folders to somewhere that seemed consistent with the other NDK files:


C:\android-ndk-1.5_r1\apps\hello-stl
C:\android-ndk-1.5_r1\sources\samples\hello-stl


I then had to change a few files before I could build the STLPort...

setup.sh

Change the top few lines to look like this:

#!/bin/bash
if uname | grep -qi linux; then
export NDK_HOST=linux-x86
elif uname | grep -qi CYGWIN; then
export NDK_HOST=windows
else
export NDK_HOST=darwin-x86
fi

Change the third line up from the bottom to look like this:


ln -sf "$NDK_DIR/build/prebuilt/${NDK_HOST}/arm-eabi-4.2.1/bin/arm-eabi-$tool" arm-linux-$tool


stlport/build/lib/android.mak

Change the TOOLCHAIN_PREFIX line to look like this:


TOOLCHAIN_PREFIX := $(NDK_DIR)/build/prebuilt/$(NDK_HOST)/arm-eabi-4.2.1/bin/arm-eabi-


sources/samples/hello-stl/Android.mk

Change the STLPORT_BASE line to be this:


STLPORT_BASE := /cygdrive/c/android-ndk-1.5_r1/stlport


Change this:


LOCAL_LDLIBS += -L$(STLPORT_BASE)/build/lib/obj/gcc/so \
-lstlport


to this:


LOCAL_STATIC_LIBRARIES := libstlport.5.1


---

Building STLPort

Now that the files are merged-in, you're ready to build STLPort!

Run the following in the cygwin shell... it will build the STLPort static library for you! You'll only need to do this once.


export NDK_DIR=/cygdrive/c/android-ndk-1.5-r1
cd $NDK_DIR
./env.sh
./setup.sh


Now, do this to copy the file to your project:


cp -p \
/cygdrive/c/android-ndk-1.5_r1\stlport\build\lib\obj\gcc\ar\libstlport.5.1.a \
/cygdrive/c/android-ndk-1.5_r1\out\apps\hello-stl\android-1.5-arm


---

Building your project's shared library

You can now go back to the cygwin shell, and do this:


cd /cygdrive/c/android-ndk-1.5_r1
make APP=hello-stl


... which will build your shared library file:

C:\android-ndk-1.5_r1\apps\hello-stl\project\libs\armeabi\libhello-stl.so


Note that this will have the static STLPort library linked-in.

Building the hello-stl project

From Eclipse, use the New Project Wizard to create a new Android project for each sample, using the "Import from Existing Source" option and import the source from c:\android-ndk-1.5_r1\apps\hello-stl\project

You can now build and run your project. The string displayed comes from the shared library, using std::string ...!