Build Native Android Apps In C + Java, Without Gradle or Android Studio.
This repository is a minimal example of building Android Apps using C & Java without requiring Android Studio or Gradle in the hopes of making it easier to port an already existing app written in C/C++ to Android.
Few key points to note:
- You can build Android Apps using just C/C++, But I decided to include Java because Android APIs are only usable via Java, And whilst you can use JNI to interact with those APIs, The truth is that JNI is very messy & should be avoided as much as possible. This means that you should separate your code that interacts with Android APIs into Java Functions & then call those functions from C/C++ using JNI.
- Android Studio projects use
gradlebuild system, which does all the dependency management for you. But this example uses a stupidly simpleMakefile, Which means using libraries like AndroidX is not feasible but other self-sufficient libraries shouldn't be a hassle. - Whilst you don't need Android Studio as promised, You will
still need Android SDK. If you're on Linux you can run
setup_android.shwhich will install required SDK into your current working directory.
More technical aspects will be on my blog post soon.