Android NDK R8e

The Android NDK is a companion tool to the Android SDK that will help Android app developers to build portions of their apps in native code.

Android NDK is designed for use only in conjunction with the Android SDK, so if you have not already installed the Android 1.5 SDK, please do so before downloading the NDK. Also, please read What is the Android NDK? to get an understanding of what the NDK offers and whether it will be useful to you.

The Android NDK provides tools that allow Android application developers to embed components that make use of native code in their Android applications.

Android applications run in the Dalvik virtual machine. The NDK allows developers to implement parts of their applications using native-code languages such as C and C++. This can provide benefits to certain classes of applications, in the form of reuse of existing code and in some cases increased speed.

Here are some key features of "Android NDK":

· A set of tools and build files used to generate native code libraries from C and C++ sources.
· A way to embed the corresponding native libraries into application package files (.apks) that can be deployed on Android devices.
· A set of native system headers and libraries that will be supported in all future versions of the Android platform, starting from Android 1.5.
· Android NDK also provides samples, documentation and tutorials.

Requirements:

· A complete Android SDK installation (including all dependencies) is required.
· Android 1.5 SDK or later version is required.
· GNU Make 3.81 or later is required. Earlier versions of GNU Make might work but have not been tested
· The native libraries created by the Android NDK can only be used on devices running the Android 1.5 platform version or later. This is due to toolchain and ABI related changes that make the native libraries incompatible with 1.0 and 1.1 system images.
· For this reason, you should use native libraries produced with the NDK in applications that are deployable to devices running the Android 1.5 platform version or later. To ensure compatibility, an application using a native library produced with the NDK

What's New in This Release: [ read full changelog ]

IMPORTANT CHANGES:
· Added 64-bit host toolchain set (package name suffix *-x86_64.*). For more information, see CHANGES.HTML and NDK-BUILD.html.
· Added Clang 3.2 compiler. GCC 4.6 is still the default. For information on using the Clang compiler, see CHANGES.HTML.
· Added static code analyzer for Linux/MacOSX hosts. For information on using the analyzer, see CHANGES.HTML.
· Added MCLinker for Linux/MacOSX hosts as an experimental feature. The ld.gold linker is the default where available, so you must explicitly enable it. For more information, see CHANGES.HTML.
· Updated ndk-build to use topological sort for module dependencies, which means the build automatically sorts out the order of libraries specified in LOCAL_STATIC_LIBRARIES, LOCAL_WHOLE_STATIC_LIBRARIES and LOCAL_SHARED_LIBRARIES. For more information, see CHANGES.HTML. (Issue 39378)

IMPORTANT BUG FIXES:
· Fixed build script to build all toolchains in -O2. Toolchains in previous releases...