Rust on Android

1. Download and install the latest Android NDK
2. Setup a standalone toolchain for your specific Android API Level
3. Clone the Rust Repository
4. Configure rustc to be built with NDK toolchain

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Document Examples

The examples in this document were tested with the following software versions:

OS X: 10.10.2 (14C1510)
Android API: 14 (Ice Cream Sandwich)
Android NDK: r10d
rustc: 1.0.0-dev (46f649c47 2015-03-18) (built 2015-03-18)
cargo: 0.0.1-pre-nightly (07cd618 2015-03-12) (built 2015-03-13)

The same commands will also work for Linux. Additional dependencies may be needed for working with the Android build chain on 64-bit Linux distros. This posting covers most major distribution dependencies.

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Android NDK

Use NDK version r9b or later. Jemalloc may not be able to build with previous NDK versions.

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NDK Standalone Toolchain

The following command builds an NDK toolchain for Android API 14, arm architecture in the ~/bin/ndk-standalone-14-arm directory.

~/android-ndk-r10d/build/tools/make-standalone-toolchain.sh --platform=android-14 --arch=arm --install-dir=~/bin/ndk-standalone-14-arm

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Clone Rust Repository

git clone https://github.com/rust-lang/rust

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Configuring and Building rustc

cd rust
mkdir build
cd build
../configure --target=arm-linux-androideabi --android-cross-path=~/bin/ndk-standalone-14-arm/
make
sudo make install

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Compiling for ARM

rustc

rustc --target=arm-linux-androideabi -C linker=~/bin/ndk-standalone-14-arm/bin/arm-linux-androideabi-gcc main.rs

cargo

Cargo needs the linker information when passing --target=arm-linux-androideabi

Create a .cargo/config file in the project root directory

cargo new some-project --bin
cd some-project
mkdir .cargo
touch .cargo/config

Place the linker path in the config file

[target.arm-linux-androideabi]
linker = "~/bin/ndk-standalone-14-arm/bin/arm-linux-androideabi-gcc"

Build

cargo build --target=arm-linux-androideabi