Porting C++ lib/app on android

Question

I want to port few C/C++ libraries to Android, how feasible it would be

e.g. OpenSSL can it be ported or suppose an application which depends on OpenSSL, what is the best way to port it to Android when Android I think itself has libssl.so

what are the tools available e.g. Scratchbox, any alternatives? Has anybody experience with it?

Answer 1

The android internals wiki is a good starting point, and includes a link explaining how to compile simple native applications.

Scratchbox does seem to be the way to go for compiling more complex apps & libraries, as you probably know already. I would suggest contacting those folks to get a bearing on your OpenSSL project.

Answer 2

There are obviously a good deal of enthusiasts who are working on improving the development environment for Android. But nothing is close enough to production quality yet.

Dalvik and its java-based environment is the only thing that can be used right now.

Hopefully, that situation will progressively change over the next couple of years.

Since you can now buy a re-flashable G1 phone, progress in that area should accelerate.

Answer 3

This should be very doable now with the release of the Android NDK. From their website:

The Android NDK is a companion tool to the Android SDK that lets Android application developers build performance-critical portions of their apps in native code...

The NDK provides:

• 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
• Documentation, samples, and tutorials