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Android NDK Beginner`s Guide - Second Edition

Chapter 1. Setting Up Your Environment

Are you ready to take up the mobile challenge? Is your computer switched on, mouse and keyboard plugged in, and screen illuminating your desk? Then let's not wait a minute more!
Developing Android applications requires a specific set of tools. You may already know about the Android Software Development Kit for pure Java applications. However, getting full access to the power of Android devices requires more: the Android Native Development Kit.

Setting up a proper Android environment is not that complicated, however it can be rather tricky. Indeed, Android is still an evolving platform and recent additions, such as Android Studio or Gradle, are not well supported when it comes to NDK development. Despite these annoyances, anybody can have a ready-to-work environment in an hour.

In this first chapter, we are going to:

Install prerequisites packages
Set up an Android development environment
Launch an Android emulator
Connect an Android device for development

Time for action – preparing Windows for Android development

To develop with the Android NDK on Windows, we need to set up a few prerequisites: Cygwin, a JDK, and Ant.

Go to http://cygwin.com/install.html and download the Cygwin setup program suitable for your environment. Once downloaded, execute it.
In the installation window, click on Next and then Install from Internet.
Follow the installation wizard screens. Consider selecting a download site from where Cygwin packages are downloaded in your country.
Then, when proposed, include the Devel, Make, Shells, and bash packages:
Follow the installation wizard until the end. This may take some time depending on your Internet connection.
Download Oracle JDK 7 from the Oracle website at http://www.oracle.com/technetwork/java/javase/downloads/index.html (or JDK 8, although it is not officially supported at the time this book is written). Launch and follow the installation wizard until the end.
Download Ant from its website at http://ant.apache.org/bindownload.cgi and unzip its binary package in the directory of your choice (for example, C:\Ant).
After installation, define JDK, Cygwin, and Ant locations in environment variables. To do so, open Windows Control Panel and go to the System panel (or right-click on the Computer item in the Windows Start menu and select Properties).
Then, go to Advanced system settings. The System Properties window appears. Finally, select the Advanced tab and click on the Environment Variables button.
In the Environment Variables window, inside the System variables list, add:
- The CYGWIN_HOME variable with the Cygwin installation directory as the value (for example, C:\Cygwin)
- The JAVA_HOME variable with the JDK installation directory as the value
- The ANT_HOME variable with the Ant installation directory as the value (for example, C:\Ant)
Prepend %CYGWIN_HOME%\bin;%JAVA_HOME%\bin;%ANT_HOME%\bin;, all separated by a semicolon, at the beginning of your PATH environment variable.
Finally, launch a Cygwin terminal. Your profile files get created on the first launch. Check the make version to ensure Cygwin works:
```
make –version
```
You will see the following output:
Ensure JDK is properly installed by running Java and checking its version. Check carefully to make sure the version number corresponds to the newly installed JDK:
```
java –version
```
You will see the following output on the screen:
From a classic Windows terminal, check the Ant version to make sure it is properly working:
```
ant -version
```
You will see the following on the terminal:

What just happened?

Windows is now set up with all the necessary packages to host Android development tools:

Cygwin, which is an open source software collection, allows the Windows platform to emulate a Unix-like environment. It aims at natively integrating software based on the POSIX standard (such as Unix, Linux, and so on) into Windows. It can be considered as an intermediate layer between applications originated from Unix/Linux (but natively recompiled on Windows) and the Windows OS itself. Cygwin includes Make, which is required by the Android NDK compilation system to build native code.
Tip
Even if Android NDK R7 introduced native Windows binaries, which does not require a Cygwin runtime, it is still recommended to install the latter for debugging purpose.
A JDK 7, which contains the runtime and tools necessary to build Java applications on Android and run the Eclipse IDE as well as Ant. The only real trouble that you may encounter when installing a JDK is some interferences from a previous installation, such as an existing Java Runtime Environment (JRE). Proper JDK use can be enforced through the JAVA_HOME and PATH environment variables.
Tip
Defining the JAVA_HOME environment variable is not required. However, JAVA_HOME is a popular convention among Java applications, Ant being one of them. It first looks for the java command in JAVA_HOME (if defined) before looking in PATH. If you install an up-to-date JDK in another location later on, do not forget to update JAVA_HOME.
Ant, which is a Java-based build automation utility. Although not a requirement, it allows building Android applications from the command line, as we will see in Chapter 2, Starting a Native Android Project. It is also a good solution to set up a continuous integration chain.

The next step consists of setting up the Android development kits.

Installing Android development kits on Windows

Android requires specific development kits to develop applications: the Android SDK and NDK. Hopefully, Google has thought about the developer community and provides all the necessary tools for free.

In the following part, we will install these kits to start developing native Android applications on Windows 7.

Time for action – installing Android SDK and NDK on Windows

The Android Studio bundle already contains the Android SDK. Let's install it.

Open your web browser and download the Android Studio bundle from http://developer.android.com/sdk/index.html.
Run the downloaded program and follow the installation wizard. When requested, install all Android components.
Then, choose the installation directories for Android Studio and the Android SDK (for example, C:\Android\android-studio and C:\Android\sdk).
Launch Android Studio to ensure it is properly working. If Android Studio proposes to import settings from a previous installation, select your preferred option and click on OK.
The Android Studio welcome screen should then appear. Close it.
Go to http://developer.android.com/tools/sdk/ndk/index.html and download the Android NDK (not SDK!) suitable for your environment. Extract the archive inside the directory of your choice (for example, C:\Android\ndk).
To easily access Android utilities from the command line, let's declare the Android SDK and NDK as environment variables. From now on, we will refer to these directories as $ANDROID_SDK and $ANDROID_NDK.
Open the Environment Variables system window, as we did previously. Inside the System variables list, add the following:
- The ANDROID_SDK variable with the SDK installation directory (for example, C:\Android\sdk)
- The ANDROID_NDK variable with the NDK installation directories (for example, C:\Android\ndk)
Prepend %ANDROID_SDK%\tools;%ANDROID_SDK%\platform-tools;%ANDROID_NDK%;, all separated by a semicolon, at the beginning of your PATH environment variable.
All Windows environment variables should be imported automatically by Cygwin when launched. Open a Cygwin terminal and list the Android devices connected to your computer (even if none are currently) with adb to check whether SDK is working. No error should appear:
```
adb devices
```
Check the ndk-build version to ensure that NDK is working. If everything works, the Make version should appear:
```
ndk-build -version
```
Open Android SDK Manager, located in the ADB bundle directory's root.
In the opened window, click on New to select all the packages and then click on the Install packages... button. Accept the licenses in the popup that appears and start the installation of Android development packages by clicking on the Install button.
After a few long minutes, all packages are downloaded and a confirmation message indicating that the Android SDK manager has been updated appears.
Validate and close the manager.

What just happened?

Android Studio is now installed on the system. Although it is now the official Android IDE, we are not going to use it much throughout the book because of its lack of support of the NDK. It is, however, absolutely possible to use Android Studio for Java development, and command line or Eclipse for C/C++.

The Android SDK has been set up through the Android Studio package. An alternative solution consists of manually deploying the SDK standalone package provided by Google. On the other hand, the Android NDK has been deployed manually from its archive. Both the SDK and NDK are made available through the command line thanks to a few environment variables.

To get a fully functional environment, all Android packages have been downloaded thanks to the Android SDK manager, which aims at managing all the platforms, sources, samples, and emulation features available through the SDK. This tool greatly simplifies the update of your environment when new SDK API and components are released. There is no need to reinstall or overwrite anything!

However, the Android SDK Manager does not manage the NDK, which explains why we downloaded it separately, and why you will need to update it manually in the future.

Tip

Installing all Android packages is not strictly necessary. Only the SDK platform (and possibly Google APIs) releases targeted by your application are really required. Installing all packages may avoid troubles when importing other projects or samples though.

The installation of your Android development environment is not over yet. We still need one more thing to develop comfortably with the NDK.

Note

This is the end of the section dedicated to the Windows setup. The following section is dedicated to OS X.

Setting up OS X

Apple computers have a reputation for being simple and easy to use. I must say that this adage is rather true when it comes to Android development. Indeed, as a Unix-based system, OS X is well adapted to run the NDK toolchain.

The following section explains how to set up the prerequisite packages on Mac OS X Yosemite.

Description

Are you an Android Java programmer who needs more performance? Are you a C/C++ developer who doesn’t want to bother with the complexity of Java and its out-of-control garbage collector? Do you want to create fast intensive multimedia applications or games? If you’ve answered yes to any of these questions then this book is for you. With some general knowledge of C/C++ development, you will be able to dive headfirst into native Android development.

What you will learn

Build your first Android native project from scratch

Communicate with Java through Java Native Interfaces

Learn the key design intricacies of creating a native OpenGL ES 2.0 graphics application

Initialize, play, and record sound and music with OpenSL ES

Handle input events and sensors to create different interaction types

Port an existing library on Android by compiling most common C++ frameworks on Android

Interface and optimize the existing code with RenderScript

Combine graphics, sound, input, sensors, and physics in your application

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iPaul Aug 20, 2015

Good intro to the NDK usage with Android Studio.

Amazon Verified review

Fabio Radin Jul 29, 2015

I love this book! This is a great book to start with the Android NDK, even it it is targeted to someone that has some experience developing on Android and has some programming experience in C/C++. I really appreciated the chapters on setting it up for Linux, Mac and Windows and, over the top, inside Android Studio!I liked a lot that it provides information about integrating existing C++ code in Android, as OpenGL from C++, and integrating both Box2D, and the Irrlicht open source 3d game engine.

jdc Oct 02, 2016

This book is a tricky one to review. I'm giving 4 stars because I think it's coverage of the NDK is fairly good but I'm personally not too interested in writing app completely in C++. I would have preferred the book to focus more on the interaction between Java and C++ since to get the most out of Android you really have to use Java

Krunal Jhaveri Jul 13, 2015

This book is really useful. It is right from the scratch and covers a wide range of topics. Examples are lucid and easy to implement.

Robin T. Wernick May 25, 2016

This book on the Android NDK is the most comprehensive source of NDK examples in both C and C++ that I have seen in five years of searching. Had it included program development on the Android Studio instead of the obsolete and often unconfigurable Eclipse, I would have given it five stars.I'm very glad to have this book because it's clarity and organization helped to clarify some lingering issues concerning the details of using C(++) libraries and controlling sensors that were overlooked in most of the previous sources. Now, I have a source that tells me in detail how to control the UI and respond to attitude and touch events in the NDK. Reading sensors and files are also included.I highly recommend buying this book if you want to work with the NDK and potentially build C(++) libraries that can support both Android and iPhone mobile applications.

Android NDK Beginner`s Guide - Second Edition: Discover the native side of Android and inject the power of C/C++ in your applications

What do you get with Print?

Android NDK Beginner`s Guide - Second Edition

Chapter 1. Setting Up Your Environment

Getting started with Android development

Note

Setting up Windows

Time for action – preparing Windows for Android development

What just happened?

Tip

Tip

Installing Android development kits on Windows

Time for action – installing Android SDK and NDK on Windows

What just happened?

Tip

Note

Setting up OS X

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