[CMake] CMake, Android, and Eclipse ADT Integration

[Robert Dailey]

Honestly I hadn't set any expectations for the response I was going to
get here. Your response is surprisingly hopeful IMHO.

So basically the goal is to treat C++ completely separate from Java
from a development, workflow, and build system perspective. In other
words, if we need to debug native code, we use Visual Studio + GDB
toolchain of sorts, all controlled and generated by CMake?

And for the Java side, we switch over to Android Studio? Also
launching on device or emulator, we initiate that from Android Studio
as well I imagine (simply to deploy the APK to the device, not really
for debugging). This won't be controlled by CMake at all.

I guess this means the only missing piece is how the Gradle scripts
find the *.so files from native code so it can be packaged up in the
APK. I assume this means a post-build event on the CMake side for
shared library targets that copies the files to
"libs/armeabi/libfoo.so"? Or is that not the way to do it anymore with
gradle? I have only used the ant + ndkbuild method, so I'm not sure
how things would change. But it seems like the general direction is
this:

1. Check out source code
2. Generate native project with CMake + android toolchain
3. Build the native libraries with the project generated by CMake
4. The build completes by installing all *.so files to corresponding
paths in the source tree so Gradle/Android Studio can find them
5. Open Android Studio & build everything
6. Deploy to device

Does this sound about right?

On Thu, Apr 30, 2015 at 10:11 PM, Parag Chandra <parag at ionicsecurity.com> wrote:
> Hi Robert,
>
> This will be a bit long-winded, so bear with me. I¹m also cross-compiling
> for Android with CMake, and am currently using Eclipse ADT for much of my
> development. I have tried hard to make Eclipse work for both the Java and
> the C++ portions of my libraries and applications, but gave up after a few
> months when it became apparent that Eclipse¹s support for Android¹s C++
> toolchain is horribly broken. Essentially, I got it to work for brief
> periods of time, with concurrent Java/C++ debugging, but then Eclipse
> would inexplicably forget all of the library/include paths, display
> thousands of red squiggles all over my code, and then refuse to launch my
> application. The only Œsolution¹ was to completely strip the project of
> its C++ nature, add it back in, and then reconfigure all the
> library/include paths, at which point everything would work again for a
> few hours or a couple of days. Add to this the fact that Google has
> officially deprecated Ant+Eclipse in favor of IntelliJ+Gradle, and it¹s
> become clear that my time will be better spent migrating to Android Studio.
>
> Of course, Android Studio has absolutely no support for C/C++ at the
> moment, but at least it won¹t get in the way like Eclipse did. So I think
> a near-term solution is to use Android Studio for all of the Java code, in
> conjunction with one of several different Visual Studio-based offerings
> for all the C++ code:
>
> Visual Studio 2015
> WinGDB
> VisualGDB
> Android++
>
> Somewhere around the CMake 3.1 timeframe, they introduced a small feature
> that enables the Visual Studio generator to support any arbitrary
> cross-toolchain, instead of just a few hardcoded ones. I¹ve been using
> this to generate VS solutions that target Native Client as well as Windows
> Phone. Although I haven¹t yet had a chance to play around with any of the
> offerings I mentioned previously, I believe you will be able to use this
> same feature to target Android, after you have installed one of these
> plug-ins in Visual Studio.
>
> Probably not the answer you wanted to hear, but I thought I would share my
> experience and hopefully save you some trouble.
>
> Parag Chandra
> Senior Software Engineer, Mobile Team
> Mobile: +1.919.824.1410
>
>  <https://ionic.com>
>
> Ionic Security Inc.
> 1170 Peachtree St. NE STE 400, Atlanta, GA 30309
>
>
>
>
>
>
>
>
>
>
>
> On 4/30/15, 4:46 PM, "Robert Dailey" <rcdailey.lists at gmail.com> wrote:
>
>>On Wed, Mar 11, 2015 at 11:42 AM, Robert Dailey
>><rcdailey.lists at gmail.com> wrote:
>>> I am implementing support for Android in my CMake scripts by using
>>> custom commands to invoke 'ant' to build the final APK. If I do it
>>> this way, and I generate for eclipse, how can I make sure it will
>>> integrate with the ADT plugin?
>>>
>>> Basically I want to be able to right-click my project in Eclipse
>>> (generated by CMake) and "Run as Android Application" and have it
>>> deploy to the device. What is required to make this happen?
>>>
>>> Also any idea how debugging will be impacted?
>>>
>>> Thanks.
>>
>>No help or advice on this?
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