[Gnash-dev] Gnash & Android

[Rob Savoye]

I decided to play with an Android port of Gnash, since I can run a fake
 ARM based phone under emulation. Since Android applications are
supposed to be written in Java, they don't really ship a functional C++
compiler. You can get a cross C compiler in the prebuilt directory of
the Android sources. They have a C++ compiler, but it has zero support
for libstdc++, which Gnash & Boost depend on heavily. Not only that, it
uses  a non-standard libc, so many things either don't exist, or they
work subtly differently. Luckily it is running a linux kernel, so I've
managed to build a full Android cross toolchain by piecing things
together by hand from the Android sources. Unlike the documented ways of
using the Code Sorcery tools, this toolchain has all the paths builtin,
and all the startup code is in the right place.

Notes on all of this work in progress are on:
http://wiki.gnashdev.org/Building_for_Android
and the toolchain itself is at:
http://www.gnashdev.org/tools/android-arm.tar.bz2

It works pretty good for most C/C++ code, I've gotten most of the
libraries Gnash depends on to build. The problems are mostly obscure
system level issues (differing pthread support, no locales, etc...)
using the stock kernel image. Getting Boost to cross compile was a
nightmare, as it didn't like the different pthread support. I finally
had to break down and hack the config files by hand to force it to build
something that actually worked. Most all of Gnash compiled, but I need
to get AGG, curl, and ffmpeg to build before it'll link.

I'm mostly putting this toolchain up for others that also want to play
with Android. By using a standard cross toolchain, you can now build
most any C/C++ application you may want without the mess of too many
options to specify all the time.

        - rob -