Cross compiling for ARM (Android)

LeafStorm · 2011-04-04 01:32:36

Hello, everyone. I just rooted my Android phone (an LG Ally), and decided that a fun way to try and use my newfound freedom would be to cross-compile some programs for it like Busybox, Lua, a fresh copy of Python, and possibly even pacman. (Being able to use makepkg to compile phone software would be awesome.)

I found the cross-arm-elf-binutils and cross-arm-gcc-base packages in community, so now the question is...how do I use them? From what I understand, it essentially comes down to bulding the software like normal, but using the executables from the cross-compiling package instead of the system installed ones. Is that basically right? Can you recommend any articles on cross-compiling in general, and for Android in particular?

tom5760 · 2011-04-04 15:55:18

You should check out the Android NDK documentation. The NDK comes with a cross compiler specifically for android, with the correct versions of libraries, etc. It comes with some examples showing how to build stuff for it.

EDIT: There is also an AUR package for it.

Last edited by tom5760 (2011-04-04 15:56:25)

ewaller · 2011-04-04 16:07:10

... And it works beautifully. From inside Eclipse, you can run code on your target phone (or in a full featured emulator) while using the debugger on the host to examine the internals. Very impressive.

I suggest brushing up on your Java...

ewaller · 2011-04-04 16:10:52

By-the-way, Busybox is in the Android Market. Grab that, SSHdroid, and terminal emulator. I use Dolphin and Thunar to look at the file system through SSHdroid using SFTP. I love it.

Arch Linux

#1 2011-04-04 01:32:36

Cross compiling for ARM (Android)

#2 2011-04-04 15:55:18

Re: Cross compiling for ARM (Android)

#3 2011-04-04 16:07:10

Re: Cross compiling for ARM (Android)

#4 2011-04-04 16:10:52

Re: Cross compiling for ARM (Android)

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