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Home > Mobile > Android Development > Mastering Android NDK
Mastering Android NDK
Mastering Android NDK

Mastering Android NDK: Master the skills you need to develop portable, highly-functional Android applications using NDK

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Profile Icon Sergey Kosarevsky Profile Icon Viktor Latypov
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Mastering Android NDK

Chapter 2. Native Libraries

In this chapter, you will learn how to build popular C/C++ libraries and link them against your applications using Android NDK. These libraries are building blocks to implement feature-rich applications with images, videos, sounds, physical simulations, and networking entirely in C++. We will provide minimal samples to demonstrate the functionality of each library. Audio and networking libraries are discussed in greater detail in the subsequent chapters. We will show you how to compile libraries and, of course, give some short samples and hints on how to start using them.

Typical caveats for porting libraries across different processors and operating systems are memory access (structure alignment and padding), byte order (endianness), calling conventions, and floating-point issues. All the libraries described in the preceding sections address these issues quite well, and even if some of them do not officially support Android NDK, fixing this is just...

Dealing with precompiled static libraries

Let's put the source code of a library we need to build for different platforms into the src directory. The Makefile script should start as follows:

CFLAGS = -O2 -I src

This line defines a variable CFLAGS with a list of compiler command-line parameters. In our case, we instruct the compiler to search the src directory for header files. If the library source code spans across multiple directories, we need to add the –I switch for each of the directories. The -O2 switch tells the compiler to enable level 2 optimizations. Next, we add the following lines for each source file:

<SourceFileName>.o:
gcc $(CFLAGS) –c <SourceFile>.cpp –o <SourceFile>.o

The string <SourceFileName> should be replaced with the actual name of the .cpp source file, and these lines should be written for each of the source files.

Now, we add the list of object files:

ObjectFiles = <SourceFile1>.o <SourceFile2>.o

Finally,...

Dynamic linking on Windows platform

The libraries considered in this chapter can be built for Windows as dynamic link libraries. We do not provide recipes for doing this because each project already contains all the necessary instructions, and Windows development is not the focus of this book. The only exception is the libcurl and OpenSSL libraries. We recommend that you download the prebuilt DLL files from the official library site.

In the example code for FreeImage, FreeType, and Theora, we use function pointers, which are initialized using the GetProcAddress() and LoadLibrary() functions from WinAPI. The same function pointers are used on Android, but in this case, they point to appropriate functions from a static library.

For example, the function FreeImage_OpenMemory() is declared as follows:

typedef FIMEMORY* ( DLL_CALLCONV* PFNFreeImage_OpenMemory )
  ( void*, unsigned int );
PFNFreeImage_OpenMemory  FI_OpenMemory = nullptr;

On Windows, we initialize the pointer with the GetProcAddress...

Curl

The libcurl library http://curl.haxx.se/libcurl is a free and easy to use client-side URL transfer library. It is a de facto standard for native applications, which deal with numerous networking protocols. Linux and OS X users enjoy having the library on their system, and a possibility to link against it using the -lcurl switch. Compilation of libcurl for Android on a Windows host requires some additional steps to be done. We explain them here.

The libcurl library build process is based on autoconf; we will need to generate the curl_config.h file before actually building the library. Run the configure script from the folder containing the unpacked libcurl distribution package. Cross-compilation command-line flags should be set to:

--host=arm-linux CC=arm-eabi-gcc

The -I parameter of the CPPFLAGS variable should point to the /system/core/include subfolder of your NDK folder, in our case:

CPPFLAGS="-I D:/NDK/system/core/include"

The libcurl library can be customized in many ways...

OpenSSL

OpenSSL is an open source library implementing the Secure Sockets Layer (SSL v2/v3) and Transport Layer Security (TLS) protocols as well as a full-strength general purpose cryptography library. It can be found at https://www.openssl.org.

Here, we will build the OpenSSL Version 1.0.1j, which contains a fix for the Heartbleed Bug(http://heartbleed.com).

The Heartbleed Bug is a serious vulnerability in the popular OpenSSL cryptographic software library. This weakness allows stealing the information that is protected, under normal conditions, by the SSL/TLS encryption used to secure the Internet.

If you try to statically link your application against an old version of OpenSSL and then publish it on Google Play, you may see the following security alert:

OpenSSL

It is possible that by the time this book is published, even the version 1.0.0j of OpenSSL will be outdated. Hence, it would be a great exercise for you to download the most recent source code and update NDK Makefiles accordingly. Here is...

FreeImage

FreeImage is a popular library for bitmap manipulation, Unity gaming engine is among the users of this library (http://freeimage.sourceforge.net/users.html). The library is an all-in-one wrapper on top of libpng, libjpeg, libtiff, and many others, providing fast image loading routines without falling back to Java code.

FreeImage includes a complete set of Makefiles for different platforms. The compilation of the library for Android is straightforward with the instructions from Dealing with precompiled static libraries section. The Application.mk file differs from the same file for Curl in one line:

APP_MODULES := FreeImage

In the Android.mk file, we will change the C compilation flags:

GLOBAL_CFLAGS   := -O3 -DHAVE_CONFIG_H=1 -DFREEIMAGE_LIB -DDISABLE_PERF_MEASUREMENT

In the following sample, we will implement two simple routines to load and save images in various file formats to and from memory blocks.

We start with the FreeImage_LoadFromMemory() routine, which takes the Data array...

Dealing with precompiled static libraries

Let's put the source code of a library we need to build for different platforms into the src directory. The Makefile script should start as follows:

CFLAGS = -O2 -I src

This line defines a variable CFLAGS with a list of compiler command-line parameters. In our case, we instruct the compiler to search the src directory for header files. If the library source code spans across multiple directories, we need to add the –I switch for each of the directories. The -O2 switch tells the compiler to enable level 2 optimizations. Next, we add the following lines for each source file:

<SourceFileName>.o:
gcc $(CFLAGS) –c <SourceFile>.cpp –o <SourceFile>.o

The string <SourceFileName> should be replaced with the actual name of the .cpp source file, and these lines should be written for each of the source files.

Now, we add the list of object files:

ObjectFiles = <SourceFile1>.o <SourceFile2>.o

Finally, we will write the target for...

Dynamic linking on Windows platform

The libraries considered in this chapter can be built for Windows as dynamic link libraries. We do not provide recipes for doing this because each project already contains all the necessary instructions, and Windows development is not the focus of this book. The only exception is the libcurl and OpenSSL libraries. We recommend that you download the prebuilt DLL files from the official library site.

In the example code for FreeImage, FreeType, and Theora, we use function pointers, which are initialized using the GetProcAddress() and LoadLibrary() functions from WinAPI. The same function pointers are used on Android, but in this case, they point to appropriate functions from a static library.

For example, the function FreeImage_OpenMemory() is declared as follows:

typedef FIMEMORY* ( DLL_CALLCONV* PFNFreeImage_OpenMemory )
  ( void*, unsigned int );
PFNFreeImage_OpenMemory  FI_OpenMemory = nullptr;

On Windows, we initialize the pointer with the GetProcAddress...

Curl

The libcurl library http://curl.haxx.se/libcurl is a free and easy to use client-side URL transfer library. It is a de facto standard for native applications, which deal with numerous networking protocols. Linux and OS X users enjoy having the library on their system, and a possibility to link against it using the -lcurl switch. Compilation of libcurl for Android on a Windows host requires some additional steps to be done. We explain them here.

The libcurl library build process is based on autoconf; we will need to generate the curl_config.h file before actually building the library. Run the configure script from the folder containing the unpacked libcurl distribution package. Cross-compilation command-line flags should be set to:

--host=arm-linux CC=arm-eabi-gcc

The -I parameter of the CPPFLAGS variable should point to the /system/core/include subfolder of your NDK folder, in our case:

CPPFLAGS="-I D:/NDK/system/core/include"

The libcurl library can be customized in many ways. We use...

OpenSSL

OpenSSL is an open source library implementing the Secure Sockets Layer (SSL v2/v3) and Transport Layer Security (TLS) protocols as well as a full-strength general purpose cryptography library. It can be found at https://www.openssl.org.

Here, we will build the OpenSSL Version 1.0.1j, which contains a fix for the Heartbleed Bug(http://heartbleed.com).

The Heartbleed Bug is a serious vulnerability in the popular OpenSSL cryptographic software library. This weakness allows stealing the information that is protected, under normal conditions, by the SSL/TLS encryption used to secure the Internet.

If you try to statically link your application against an old version of OpenSSL and then publish it on Google Play, you may see the following security alert:

It is possible that by the time this book is published, even the version 1.0.0j of OpenSSL will be outdated. Hence, it would be a great exercise for you to download the most recent source code and update NDK Makefiles accordingly. Here is...

FreeImage

FreeImage is a popular library for bitmap manipulation, Unity gaming engine is among the users of this library (http://freeimage.sourceforge.net/users.html). The library is an all-in-one wrapper on top of libpng, libjpeg, libtiff, and many others, providing fast image loading routines without falling back to Java code.

FreeImage includes a complete set of Makefiles for different platforms. The compilation of the library for Android is straightforward with the instructions from Dealing with precompiled static libraries section. The Application.mk file differs from the same file for Curl in one line:

APP_MODULES := FreeImage

In the Android.mk file, we will change the C compilation flags:

GLOBAL_CFLAGS   := -O3 -DHAVE_CONFIG_H=1 -DFREEIMAGE_LIB -DDISABLE_PERF_MEASUREMENT

In the following sample, we will implement two simple routines to load and save images in various file formats to and from memory blocks.

We start with the FreeImage_LoadFromMemory() routine, which takes the Data array...

Loading and saving images

To make the preceding code usable, we add two more routines that save and load images from disk files. The first one, FreeImage_LoadBitmapFromFile(), loads the bitmap:

bool FreeImage_LoadBitmapFromFile( const std::string& FileName, std::vector<ubyte>& OutData, int& W, int& H, int& BitsPP )
{
  std::ifstream InFile( FileName.c_str(),
  std::ios::in | std::ifstream::binary );
  std::vector<char> Data(
    ( std::istreambuf_iterator<char>( InFile ) ), std::istreambuf_iterator<char>() );
  return FreeImage_LoadFromStream(
    ( ubyte* )&Data[0], ( int )data.size(),
    OutData, W, H, BitsPP, true );
}

We use a simple function to extract the file extension, which serves as a file type tag:

std::string ExtractExtension( const std::string& FileName )
{
  size_t pos = FileName.find_last_of( '.' );
  return ( pos == std::string::npos ) ?
    FileName : FileName.substr( pos );
}

The FreeImage_SaveBitmapToFile() function saves...

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Key benefits

  • Develop portable games using Android NDK and debug them on your desktop
  • Familiarise yourself with different popular C++ libraries on Android and use them in your games
  • Write multi-threaded code with graphics, sound, networking, and resource storage

Description

Android NDK is used for multimedia applications that require direct access to system resources. NDK is also the key for portability, which in turn allows a reasonably comfortable development and debugging process using familiar tools such as GCC and Clang toolchains. This is a hands-on guide to extending your game development skills with Android NDK. The book takes you through many clear, step-by-step example applications to help you further explore the features of Android NDK and some popular C++ libraries and boost your productivity by debugging the development process. Through the course of this book, you will learn how to write portable multi-threaded native code, use HTTP networking in C++, play audio files, use OpenGL ES 3, and render high-quality text. Each chapter aims to take you one step closer to building your application. By the end of this book, you will be able to create an engaging, complete gaming application.

Who is this book for?

If you want to leverage your C++ skills in mobile development and increase the performance of your Android applications, then this is the book for you. Knowledge of C or C++ is assumed, including pointer manipulation, multi-threading, object-oriented programming concepts, and the basics of C++11. It would be an added advantage if you know how to develop applications without any IDE.

What you will learn

  • Explore popular C++ libraries and use them on Android
  • Write portable, multithreaded native networking code
  • Create portable audio framework using OpenAL
  • Implement portable rendering framework using OpenGL ES 3
  • Debug mobile applications on your desktop machine
  • Access resources from APK archives
  • Render text with FreeType
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Publication date : Sep 30, 2015
Length: 328 pages
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Language : English
ISBN-13 : 9781785288333
Category :
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Languages :
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Concepts :
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Tools :
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Length: 328 pages
Edition : 1st
Language : English
ISBN-13 : 9781785288333
Category :
Mobile
Languages :
C++
Concepts :
Android Development
Tools :
Android NDK

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Table of Contents

11 Chapters
1. Using Command-line Tools Chevron down icon Chevron up icon
1. Using Command-line Tools
Using Android command-line tools on Windows
Using Android command-line tools on OS X
Using Android command-line tools on Linux
Creating an Ant-based application template manually
Creating a Gradle-based application template manually
Embedding native code
Building and signing release Android applications
Organizing the cross-platform code
Using TeamCity continuous integration server with Android applications
Summary
2. Native Libraries Chevron down icon Chevron up icon
2. Native Libraries
Dealing with precompiled static libraries
Dynamic linking on Windows platform
Curl
OpenSSL
FreeImage
Loading and saving images
FreeType
Theora
OpenAL
Linking the libraries to your application
Summary
3. Networking Chevron down icon Chevron up icon
3. Networking
Intrusive smart pointers
Portable multithreading primitives
Task queues
Message pumps and asynchronous callbacks
Asynchronous networking with libcurl
Android licensing in native applications
Flurry analytics
Summary
4. Organizing a Virtual Filesystem Chevron down icon Chevron up icon
4. Organizing a Virtual Filesystem
Mount points
Mount points and streams
Accessing files on the host filesystems
In-memory files
Aliasing
Writing files
Accessing the archive files
Accessing application assets
Summary
5. Cross-platform Audio Streaming Chevron down icon Chevron up icon
5. Cross-platform Audio Streaming
Initialization and playback
Streaming sounds
Stringed musical instrument model
Decoding compressed audio
Summary
6. OpenGL ES 3.1 and Cross-platform Rendering Chevron down icon Chevron up icon
6. OpenGL ES 3.1 and Cross-platform Rendering
Linear algebra and transformations
Graphics initialization using SDL2
OpenGL API binding
Cross-platform OpenGL abstractions
Feeding the geometry data to OpenGL
Shader programs
Textures
Summary
7. Cross-platform UI and Input System Chevron down icon Chevron up icon
7. Cross-platform UI and Input System
Rendering
Text rendering
Organizing the UI system
Summary
8. Writing a Rendering Engine Chevron down icon Chevron up icon
8. Writing a Rendering Engine
The scene graph
Lighting and shading
Lights and light nodes
Material system
Demo application and a rendering technique
Summary
9. Implementing Game Logic Chevron down icon Chevron up icon
9. Implementing Game Logic
Boids
Implementation of the flocking algorithms
Digression: helper routines
Collective behaviors
Rendering the swarm
Boids demonstration
The page-based user interface
Summary
10. Writing Asteroids Game Chevron down icon Chevron up icon
10. Writing Asteroids Game
Creating an on-screen joystick
Implementing the particle system
Asteroids game
Summary
Index Chevron down icon Chevron up icon
Index

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Customer reviews

Rating distribution
Full star icon Full star icon Full star icon Full star icon Full star icon 5
(2 Ratings)
5 star 100%
4 star 0%
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1 star 0%
aReviewer Nov 12, 2015
Full star icon Full star icon Full star icon Full star icon Full star icon 5
For Android phones, while you can write applications entirely in Java, there are situations where Java alone does not meet the needs of your application. For example, you already have a library written in another language, and wish to make it accessible to Java code. This would also be true for portions of time-critical code that you want to implement in C/C++ or assembly. This is where “Mastering Android NDK” is a great help. The following quote from books’s description sums it very well:“It covers [Android] NDK development from quite an unusual point of view: building your mobile C++ applications in a portable way so that they can be developed and debugged on a desktop computer.”The book starts out with steps for installing essential tools and building popular C/C++ libraries. Then the authors take you through details on cross-platform networking, UI, audio streaming and 3D graphics rendering. The last chapter brings everything together with an Asteroids game with 3D graphics, shadows, particles, and sounds. There is an entire chapter dedicated to game logic.I like writing style of Packt books so I know what to expect. The books packs lots of details and I would recommend it to anyone seriously looking to mastering Android NDK.Also, checkout Dan Galpin’s presentation “Using the NDK Performantly” (at Big Android BBQ 2015) https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Wb5HAI73QRE
Amazon Verified review Amazon
Satya S Kolachina Oct 31, 2015
Full star icon Full star icon Full star icon Full star icon Full star icon 5
NDK toolset plays critical role in Android development to implement CPU-intensive tasks using native C/C++ languages. While most of the literature available discusses the typical Java based development for Android platform, there are not many publications available in the market to help developers understand how to use the NDK toolset effectively.The book ‘Mastering Android NDK’ collectively authored by ‘Sergey Kosarevsky’ and ‘Viktor Latypov’ makes good attempt in educating the readers the techniques of using the Android NDK toolset. This is a simple, well written, ‘No nonsense’ book explaining the developers how to use the command-line tools, building libraries, networking, working with OpenGL ES 3.1 to develop Game engines as well as effective graphic applications.Android developers working on any of the popular desktops (Windows, OS X and Linux) will be able to use this book as it explains the readers how to use it on each of these platforms. From my perspective this is a commendable approach the authors have taken to ensure that developers on all these platforms will be able to make use of the book.From my perspective the book is an asset to every Android developer, who wants to write effective, performance oriented applications on Android platform, as the book provide enough examples to supplement the theoretical discussion.
Amazon Verified review Amazon

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Machine Learning Techniques for Text
Machine Learning Techniques for Text
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Oct 2022 448 pages
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iOS 16 Programming for Beginners
iOS 16 Programming for Beginners
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Nov 2022 686 pages
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Test-Driven iOS Development with Swift
Test-Driven iOS Development with Swift
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Apr 2022 280 pages
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About the authors

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Profile icon Sergey Kosarevsky
Sergey Kosarevsky
LinkedIn icon Github icon
Sergey Kosarevsky is a former rendering lead at Ubisoft RedLynx. He currently leads Vulkan development at Meta. He worked in the AR/VR and mobile industries at DAQRI, TWNKLS, Blippar, Layer, Yandex, and SPB Software, where he designed and implemented custom real-time rendering technology. He has more than 20 years of software development experience and more than 14 years of mobile and embedded 3D graphics experience. In his Ph.D. thesis, Sergey employed computer vision to solve mechanical engineering problems. He has co-authored several books on mobile software development in C++.
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Profile icon Viktor Latypov
Viktor Latypov
Viktor Latypov is a software engineer and mathematician with experience in compiler development, device drivers, robotics, and high-performance computing and with a personal interest in 3D graphics and mobile technology. Surrounded by computers for more than 20 years, he enjoys every bit of developing and designing software for anything with a CPU inside. Viktor holds a PhD in applied mathematics from Saint-Petersburg State University.
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Shipping Details

USA:

'

Economy: Delivery to most addresses in the US within 10-15 business days

Premium: Trackable Delivery to most addresses in the US within 3-8 business days

UK:

Economy: Delivery to most addresses in the U.K. within 7-9 business days.
Shipments are not trackable

Premium: Trackable delivery to most addresses in the U.K. within 3-4 business days!
Add one extra business day for deliveries to Northern Ireland and Scottish Highlands and islands

EU:

Premium: Trackable delivery to most EU destinations within 4-9 business days.

Australia:

Economy: Can deliver to P. O. Boxes and private residences.
Trackable service with delivery to addresses in Australia only.
Delivery time ranges from 7-9 business days for VIC and 8-10 business days for Interstate metro
Delivery time is up to 15 business days for remote areas of WA, NT & QLD.

Premium: Delivery to addresses in Australia only
Trackable delivery to most P. O. Boxes and private residences in Australia within 4-5 days based on the distance to a destination following dispatch.

India:

Premium: Delivery to most Indian addresses within 5-6 business days

Rest of the World:

Premium: Countries in the American continent: Trackable delivery to most countries within 4-7 business days

Asia:

Premium: Delivery to most Asian addresses within 5-9 business days

Disclaimer:
All orders received before 5 PM U.K time would start printing from the next business day. So the estimated delivery times start from the next day as well. Orders received after 5 PM U.K time (in our internal systems) on a business day or anytime on the weekend will begin printing the second to next business day. For example, an order placed at 11 AM today will begin printing tomorrow, whereas an order placed at 9 PM tonight will begin printing the day after tomorrow.


Unfortunately, due to several restrictions, we are unable to ship to the following countries:

  1. Afghanistan
  2. American Samoa
  3. Belarus
  4. Brunei Darussalam
  5. Central African Republic
  6. The Democratic Republic of Congo
  7. Eritrea
  8. Guinea-bissau
  9. Iran
  10. Lebanon
  11. Libiya Arab Jamahriya
  12. Somalia
  13. Sudan
  14. Russian Federation
  15. Syrian Arab Republic
  16. Ukraine
  17. Venezuela