1 If you read this file _as_is_, just ignore the funny characters you
2 see. It is written in the POD format (see pod/perlpod.pod) which is
3 specially designed to be readable as is.
7 perlandroid - Perl under Android
11 The first portions of this documents contains instructions
12 to cross-compile Perl for Android 2.0 and later, using the
13 binaries provided by Google. The latter portion describes how to build
14 perl native using one of the toolchains available on the Play Store.
18 This document describes how to set up your host environment when
19 attempting to build Perl for Android.
21 =head1 Cross-compilation
23 These instructions assume an Unixish build environment on your host system;
24 they've been tested on Linux and OS X, and may work on Cygwin and MSYS.
25 While Google also provides an NDK for Windows, these steps won't work
26 native there, although it may be possible to cross-compile through different
29 If your host system's architecture is 32 bits, remember to change the
30 C<x86_64>'s below to C<x86>'s. On a similar vein, the examples below
31 use the 4.8 toolchain; if you want to use something older or newer (for
32 example, the 4.4.3 toolchain included in the 8th revision of the NDK), just
33 change those to the relevant version.
35 =head2 Get the Android Native Development Kit (NDK)
37 You can download the NDK from L<https://developer.android.com/tools/sdk/ndk/index.html>.
38 You'll want the normal, non-legacy version.
40 =head2 Determine the architecture you'll be cross-compiling for
42 There's three possible options: arm-linux-androideabi for ARM,
43 mipsel-linux-android for MIPS, and simply x86 for x86.
44 As of 2014, most Android devices run on ARM, so that is generally a safe bet.
46 With those two in hand, you should add
48 $ANDROID_NDK/toolchains/$TARGETARCH-4.8/prebuilt/`uname | tr '[A-Z]' '[a-z]'`-x86_64/bin
50 to your PATH, where $ANDROID_NDK is the location where you unpacked the
51 NDK, and $TARGETARCH is your target's architecture.
53 =head2 Set up a standalone toolchain
55 This creates a working sysroot that we can feed to Configure later.
57 $ export ANDROID_TOOLCHAIN=/tmp/my-toolchain-$TARGETARCH
58 $ export SYSROOT=$ANDROID_TOOLCHAIN/sysroot
59 $ $ANDROID_NDK/build/tools/make-standalone-toolchain.sh \
60 --platform=android-9 \
61 --install-dir=$ANDROID_TOOLCHAIN \
62 --system=`uname | tr '[A-Z]' '[a-z]'`-x86_64 \
63 --toolchain=$TARGETARCH-4.8
67 adb is the Android Debug Bridge. For our purposes, it's basically a way
68 of establishing an ssh connection to an Android device without having to
69 install anything on the device itself, as long as the device is either on
70 the same local network as the host, or it is connected to the host through
72 Perl can be cross-compiled using either adb or a normal ssh connection;
73 in general, if you can connect your device to the host using a USB port,
74 or if you don't feel like installing an sshd app on your device,
75 you may want to use adb, although you may be forced to switch to ssh if
76 your device is not rooted and you're unlucky -- more on that later.
77 Alternatively, if you're cross-compiling to an emulator, you'll have to
82 To use adb, download the Android SDK from L<https://developer.android.com/sdk/index.html>.
83 The "SDK Tools Only" version should suffice -- if you downloaded the ADT
84 Bundle, you can find the sdk under $ADT_BUNDLE/sdk/.
86 Add $ANDROID_SDK/platform-tools to your PATH, which should give you access
87 to adb. You'll now have to find your device's name using 'adb devices',
88 and later pass that to Configure through '-Dtargethost=$DEVICE'.
90 However, before calling Configure, you need to check if using adb is a
91 viable choice in the first place. Because Android doesn't have a /tmp,
92 nor does it allow executables in the sdcard, we need to find somewhere in
93 the device for Configure to put some files in, as well as for the tests
94 to run in. If your device is rooted, then you're good. Try running these:
96 $ export TARGETDIR=/mnt/asec/perl
97 $ adb -s $DEVICE shell "echo sh -c '\"mkdir $TARGETDIR\"' | su --"
99 Which will create the directory we need, and you can move on to the next
100 step. /mnt/asec is mounted as a tmpfs in Android, but it's only
103 If your device is not rooted, you may still be in luck. Try running this:
105 $ export TARGETDIR=/data/local/tmp/perl
106 $ adb -s $DEVICE shell "mkdir $TARGETDIR"
108 If the command works, you can move to the next step, but beware:
109 B<You'll have to remove the directory from the device once you are done!
110 Unlike /mnt/asec, /data/local/tmp may not get automatically garbage
111 collected once you shut off the phone>.
113 If neither of those work, then you can't use adb to cross-compile to your
114 device. Either try rooting it, or go for the ssh route.
118 To use ssh, you'll need to install and run a sshd app and set it up
119 properly. There are several paid and free apps that do this rather
120 easily, so you should be able to spot one on the store.
121 Remember that Perl requires a passwordless connection, so set up a
124 Note that several apps spew crap to stderr every time you
125 connect, which can throw off Configure. You may need to monkeypatch
126 the part of Configure that creates 'run-ssh' to have it discard stderr.
128 Since you're using ssh, you'll have to pass some extra arguments to
129 Configure: -Dtargetrun=ssh -Dtargethost=$TARGETHOST -Dtargetuser=$TARGETUSER -Dtargetport=$TARGETPORT
131 =head2 Configure and beyond
133 With all of the previous done, you're now ready to call Configure.
135 If using adb, a "basic" Configure line will look like this:
137 $ ./Configure -des -Dusedevel -Dusecrosscompile -Dtargetrun=adb \
138 -Dcc=$TARGETARCH-gcc \
140 -Dtargetdir=$TARGETDIR \
143 If using ssh, it's not too different -- we just change targetrun to ssh,
144 and pass in targetuser and targetport. It ends up looking like this:
146 $ ./Configure -des -Dusedevel -Dusecrosscompile -Dtargetrun=ssh \
147 -Dcc=$TARGETARCH-gcc \
149 -Dtargetdir=$TARGETDIR \
150 -Dtargethost="$TARGETHOST" \
151 -Dtargetuser=$TARGETUSER \
152 -Dtargetport=$TARGETPORT
154 Now you're ready to run make and make test!
156 As a final word of warning, if you're using adb, make test may appear to
157 hang; this is because it doesn't output anything until it finishes
158 running all tests. You can check its progress by logging into the
159 device, moving to $TARGETDIR, and looking at the file output.stdout.
167 If you are targetting x86 Android, you will have to change $TARGETARCH-gcc
168 to i686-linux-android-gcc.
172 On some older low-end devices -- think early 2.2 era -- some tests,
173 particularly t/re/uniprops, may crash the phone, causing it to turn
174 itself off once, and then back on again.
180 While Google doesn't provide a native toolchain for Android,
181 you can still get one from the Play Store; for example, there's the CCTools
182 app which you can get for free.
183 Keep in mind that you want a full
184 toolchain; some apps tend to default to installing only a barebones
185 version without some important utilities, like ar or nm.
187 Once you have the toolchain set up properly, the only
188 remaining hurdle is actually locating where in the device it was installed
189 in. For example, CCTools installs its toolchain in
190 /data/data/com.pdaxrom.cctools/root/cctools. With the path in hand,
191 compiling perl is little more than:
193 export SYSROOT=<location of the native toolchain>
194 export LD_LIBRARY_PATH="$SYSROOT/lib:`pwd`:`pwd`/lib:`pwd`/lib/auto:$LD_LIBRARY_PATH"
195 sh Configure -des -Dsysroot=$SYSROOT -Alibpth="/system/lib /vendor/lib"
199 Brian Fraser <fraserbn@gmail.com>