How to cross-compile Python for Android

When it comes to cross-compiling Python for Android, I've followed Gabriel's blog post @ http://mdqinc.com/blog/2011/09/cross-compiling-python-for-android/ and I was successful in creating an Arm-based Python executable (and related libraries) in little or no time.
Gabriel has a lot of the initial steps just verbally described, but I've come up with a shell script that allows you to automate the entire process. Of course you need to replace <path-to-android-ndk> with the directory where you have installed the NDK.
Here it goes.

ANDROID_NDK=<path-to-android-ndk>
ANDROID_ABI="armeabi-v7a"
ANDROID_NATIVE_API_LEVEL="android-8"
PYTHON_VERSION="2.6.2"

output_dir=$1
mkdir -p $output_dir
cd $output_dir
# get Python source tarball
wget http://www.python.org/ftp/python/$PYTHON_VERSION/Python-$PYTHON_VERSION.tgz

# create Python Host version
tar zxvf Python-$PYTHON_VERSION.tgz
mv Python-$PYTHON_VERSION Host-Python-$PYTHON_VERSION-src
cd Host-Python-$PYTHON_VERSION-src
./configure --prefix=$output_dir/Host-Python-$PYTHON_VERSION
make
make install

cd $output_dir
# create Python Cross-compiled version for Android
tar zxvf Python-$PYTHON_VERSION.tgz
mv Python-$PYTHON_VERSION Android-Python-$PYTHON_VERSION-src
cd Android-Python-$PYTHON_VERSION-src

# get and apply Python patch
wget -o Python-2.6.2-android.patch https://sites.google.com/site/dgtechblogscripts/Python-2.6.2-android.patch
patch -p0 < Python-2.6.2-android.patch
# fix setup.py
mv setup.py setup.py.orig
cat setup.py.orig | awk '{ if (NR==316) {print "    " $0} else {print $0}}' > setup.py

MY_HOSTPYTHON=$output_dir/Host-Python-$PYTHON_VERSION/bin/python
MY_HOSTPGEN=$output_dir/Host-Python-$PYTHON_VERSION-src/Parser/pgen

export ANDROID_NDK
export PATH="$ANDROID_NDK/toolchains/arm-linux-androideabi-4.4.3/prebuilt/linux-x86/bin/:$ANDROID_NDK:$ANDROID_NDK/tools:/usr/local/bin:/usr/bin:/bin"
export ARCH=$ANDROID_ABI
export CFLAGS="-DANDROID -mandroid -fomit-frame-pointer --sysroot $ANDROID_NDK/platforms/$ANDROID_NATIVE_API_LEVEL/arch-arm"
export CXXFLAGS="$CFLAGS"
export CC="arm-linux-androideabi-gcc $CFLAGS"
export CXX="arm-linux-androideabi-g++ $CXXFLAGS"
export AR="arm-linux-androideabi-ar"
export RANLIB="arm-linux-androideabi-ranlib"
export STRIP="arm-linux-androideabi-strip --strip-unneeded"
export MAKE="make -j4 install HOSTPYTHON=$MY_HOSTPYTHON HOSTPGEN=$MY_HOSTPGEN CROSS_COMPILE=arm-eabi- CROSS_COMPILE_TARGET=yes"

./configure LDFLAGS="-Wl,--allow-shlib-undefined" CFLAGS="-mandroid -fomit-frame-pointer --sysroot $ANDROID_NDK/platforms/$ANDROID_NATIVE_API_LEVEL/arch-arm" HOSTPYTHON=$MY_HOSTPYTHON HOSTPGEN=$MY_HOSTPGEN --host=arm-eabi --build=i686-pc-linux-gnu --enable-shared --prefix="$output_dir/Android-Python-$PYTHON_VERSION"
sed -i "s|^INSTSONAME=\(.*.so\).*|INSTSONAME=\\1|g" Makefile
$MAKE
 

Read More

Installing the Android NDK

These instructions refer to a Ubuntu 12.04.1 LTS system running on an Intel processor.

• Head to the http://developer.android.com/tools/sdk/ndk/index.html web site and download the latest version of the Android NDK for Linux (release r8b for example):
  

  $ wget http://dl.google.com/android/ndk/android-ndk-r8b-linux-x86.tar.bz2

  
  
• Unzip and untar the downloaded file in your preferred directory:

  $ bunzip2 android-ndk-r8b-linux-x86.tar.bz2
  $ tar zxvf android-sdk_r20.0.3-linux.tgz

You should now have a directory called  android-ndk-r8b containing release 8b of the Android NDK.

Read More

Problems with new version of rpmbuild

The Problem

With the new version of rpmbuild installed on CentOS 6.x, if you try to use an old RPM spec file, you will get an error like the following:

error: File not found: <path>/BUILDROOT/<product>-6.7.x86_64/<filename>

Previously rpmbuild would install and look for files under the rpm_top/BUILD directory, while now it looks under the new BUILDROOT directory.

The Solution

This is what I ended up doing to solve the problem. When I call rpmbuild I now define a new variable, for example:

$ centos_release=$(lsb_release -rs | sed 's/\.//')

$ rpmbuild --define "centos_release $centos_release" ... -bb specfile 

then I changed my spec file to contain something like the following:

%if %{centos_release} >= 60

%setup -q -c -n %{buildroot}/usr/local/ 
cp -a -r %{buildroot}/usr/local/ /usr/
 

%else
 

%setup -q -c -n usr/local/
%install
cp -a -r $PWD /usr/
 

%endif

Another related problem

Suppose you have a single tar ball and you want to create two or more RPMs using different spec files. The new version of rpmbuild automatically cleans the BUILDROOT directory after completing the targets for a given spec file. If you want to save time and have the second spec file just look for the BUILDROOT created by the first spec it won't find it because of the automatic clean. So it seems like you are forced to untar and install under the BUILDROOT your file over and over again.
A simple solution to this problem is to add a %clean directive to your spec file and do nothing to disable to automatic cleaning done by rpmbuild. Add the following line at the bottom of your spec file:

%clean

Read More

Installing the Android SDK

These instructions refer to a Ubuntu 12.04.1 LTS system running on an Intel processor.

• Head to the developer.android.com web site and download the latest version of the Android SDK for Linux (release 20.0.3 for example): http://dl.google.com/android/android-sdk_r20.0.3-linux.tgz 
• Untar the downloaded file in your preferred directory:

  $ tar zxvf android-sdk_r20.0.3-linux.tgz

You should now have a directory called  android-sdk-linux containing release 20.0.3 of the Android SDK.

Read More

Porting your Legacy C/C++ project to Android

This is a recurring problem people have often: trying to port a big C/C++ project to the Android platform. You have thousands of lines of tested and working C/C++ code that you want to reuse and access from your Android application. So far Android only provides an SDK for Java applications, only supports devices with ARM, MIPS and x86 architectures, and several steps are necessary if you want to port your code and call it from Java as a library. By large the biggest deployment is for ARM processor devices, so we are initially focused on porting our code to this architecture.
Porting your C/C++ project to the Android platform entails then the following steps:

1. Cross-compile the C/C++ code for the ARM processor (or any other supported) architecture.
2. Develop a JNI module allowing an Android application to natively call the C/C++ code from Java.
3. Develop an Android application using the JNI module.
4. Run and debug the app on an Android device.

Developing an Android application requires the Android Software Development Kit (SDK), while cross-compiling your C/C++ code and developing the JNI module for Android requires the Android Native Development Kit (NDK). Both these kits run on Windows XP/Win7, Mac OS 10.5.8 or later (Intel), or Ubuntu Linux 8.04 or later.

My intention is to publish on this blog several posts with detailed instructions on how to accomplish the above mentioned steps. The instructions are based on other posts you can search on the internet and on my experience with Android. All the instructions are based on the development and testing environments described below.

Development Environment

• Processor: Intel(R) Core(TM) 2 Duo CPU     E8600  @ 3.33GHz
• RAM: 4GB DDR2 SDRAM DIMM 240-pin
• OS: Ubuntu Linux 12.04
• Eclipse IDE Juno
• Android SDK r20
• Android NDK r8

Testing Environment

• LG Thrill 4G - Android 2.2
• Samsung Galaxy Tab 8.9 - Android 3.2
• Samsung Galaxy Tab 2 7.0 - Android 4.01
• Samsung Galaxy S III - Android 4.0.4

Read More

Transferring Files from a computer to your Android device

Android devices have file systems similar to regular computers. Subject to permissions restrictions, we can transfer files from a computer to a device (connected to the computer by USB) or emulator, or from the device or emulator to the computer. There are several ways to transfer files to an Android device:

1. Using Eclipse
   Select the DDMS perspective for Eclipse and use the File Explorer tab to select the directory where you want to tranfer a file to (a drawback of using this method is that you can only tranfer one file at a time).
2. Using the ADB
   You can tranfer entire directories using the ADB command line interface. For example to transfer the entire content of a director to an Android device connected to a Ubuntu computer via the USB port:
   

   $ adb push <path to directory to copy> /mnt/sdcard/<target directory>

3. Install an ssh daemon on the Android device and then use sftp from your workstation. For example you can download the free SSHDroid app from the Google market and install it on your device, run the app an find out about the IP address to connect to. Then from a terminal window in Linux you can connect like this (works on Ubuntu 12.04):

   $ ssh -p 2222 root@ip-address-mentioned-in-SSHDroid

   
   

Read More

Welcome

After many years of searching the web for tips and tricks about computers, operating systems and programming languages, it's finally time to give back and post solutions to common problems I'm facing during my professional career.

I hope you will find this blog useful.

Read More