Starting from revision 5 of their NDK, Google added a (very usefull) script to build a standalone toolchain, i.e which works without having to deal with specific setup scripts (ndk-build and so on). Make, configure, and autoconf are now welcome !


First of all, download and uncompress the NDK :

$ mkdir Android && cd Android
$ wget http://dl.google.com/android/ndk/android-ndk-r5b-linux-x86.tar.bz2
$ tar xf android-ndk-r5b-linux-x86.tar.bz2

Now, we’ll build the standalone toolchain, for example, for the Gingerbread API (level 9) :

$ ls
android-ndk-r5b
$ export NDK=`pwd`/android-ndk-r5b
$ chmod +x $NDK/build/tools/make-standalone-toolchain.sh
$ $NDK/build/tools/make-standalone-toolchain.sh --platform=android-9 --install-dir=$NDK/.standalone/android-9-toolchain

That’s it ! The toolchain binaries do not depend or contain host-specific paths, in other words, they can be installed in any location, or even moved if you need to. Now, you just need to set your environment :

$ export PATH=$NDK/.standalone/android-9-toolchain/bin:$PATH
$ export CC=arm-linux-androideabi-gcc

Ok, now, let’s do our first build :

$ cat helloandroid.c
#include 
int main(void)
{
    printf("Hello Android !\n");
    return 0;
}
$ $CC -o helloandroid helloandroid.c
$  file helloandroid
helloandroid: ELF 32-bit LSB executable, ARM, version 1 (SYSV), dynamically linked (uses shared libs), not stripped

And burn it into your device :

$ adb push helloandroid /data/
115 KB/s (3324 bytes in 0.028s)
$ adb shell chmod +x /data/helloandroid
$ adb shell /data/helloandroid
Hello Android !

Huuurraa !

$ ./set-toolchain.sh android-9
Forking a new shell...
$PATH =  /home/renaud/Android/android-ndk-r5b/.standalone/android-9-toolchain/bin:/usr/local/sbin:/usr/local/bin:/usr/sbin:/usr/bin:/sbin:/bin:/usr/games
$CC =  arm-linux-androideabi-gcc

Enjoy !