/android-ndk-rs

Rust bindings to the Android NDK

Primary LanguageRustApache License 2.0Apache-2.0

Rust on Android

Rust MIT license APACHE2 license

Libraries and tools for Rust programming on Android targets:

Name Description Badges
ndk-sys Raw FFI bindings to the NDK crates.io crates.io
ndk Safe abstraction of the bindings crates.io crates.io
ndk-context Android handles crates.io
ndk-glue Startup code crates.io crates.io
ndk-build Everything for building apk's crates.io crates.io
cargo-apk Build tool crates.io crates.io

See ndk-examples for examples using the NDK and the README files of the crates for more details.

Supported NDK versions

android-ndk-rs aims to support at least the LTS and Rolling Release branches of the NDK, as described on their wiki. Additionally the Beta Release might be supported to prepare for an upcoming release.

As of writing (2021-07-24) the following NDKs are tested:

Branch Version Status Working
r18 18.1.5063045 Deprecated
r19 19.2.5345600 Deprecated ✔️
r20 20.1.5948944 Deprecated ✔️
r21 21.4.7075529 Deprecated ✔️
r22 22.1.7171670 Deprecated ✔️
r23 beta 1/2 Deprecated ✔️
r23 23.0.7272597-beta3 Deprecated ✔️ Workaround in #189
r23 23.1.7779620 LTS ✔️ Workaround in #189
r24 24.0.7856742-beta1 Rolling Release ✔️ Workaround in #189

Hello world

Quick start for setting up a new project with support for Android. For communication with the Android framework in our native Rust application we require a NativeActivity. ndk-glue will do the necessary initialization when calling main but requires a few adjustments:

Cargo.toml

[lib]
crate-type = ["lib", "cdylib"]

Wraps main function using attribute macro ndk::glue::main:

src/lib.rs

#[cfg_attr(target_os = "android", ndk_glue::main(backtrace = "on"))]
pub fn main() {
    println!("hello world");
}

src/main.rs

fn main() {
    $crate::main();
}

Install cargo apk for building, running and debugging your application:

$ cargo install cargo-apk

We can now directly execute our Hello World application on a real connected device or an emulator:

$ cargo apk run

Logging and stdout

Stdout is redirected to the android log api when using ndk-glue. Any logger that logs to stdout, like println!, should therefore work.

Use can filter the output in logcat

$ adb logcat RustStdoutStderr:D *:S

Android logger

Android logger can be setup using feature "logger" and attribute macro like so:

src/lib.rs

#[cfg_attr(target_os = "android", ndk_glue::main(logger(level = "debug", tag = "my-tag")))]
pub fn main() {
    log!("hello world");
}

App/APK configuration

Android APKs contain a file called AndroidManifest.xml, which has things like permission requests and feature declarations, plus configuration of activities, intents, resource folders and more. This file is autogenerated by cargo-apk. To control what goes in it through Cargo.toml, refer to cargo-apk's README.

Overriding crate paths

The macro ndk_glue::main tries to determine crate names from current Cargo.toml. In cases when it is not possible the default crate names will be used. You can override this names with specific paths like so:

#[ndk_glue::main(
  ndk_glue = "path::to::ndk_glue",
)]
fn main() {}

JNI

Java Native Interface (JNI) allows executing Java code in a VM from native applications. To access the JNI use the AndroidContext from the ndk-context crate. ndk-examples contains a jni_audio example which will print out all output audio devices in the log.

  • jni, JNI bindings for Rust