Use ARMCC to compile Android native library

Question

I've been working on an Android project which has several native C++ libraries. Compiling and debugging using Eclipse with ADT plugin works well. Obviously Android NDK uses arm-linux-gnueabi-gcc of some version to compile the native libraries.

Since I've been using NEON intrinsics heavily, I would like to try to compile the native libraries with ARM's official compiler armcc. I read everywhere that armcc is supposed to give better optimized code when using intrinsics. So I downloaded the trial version of DS-5 from ARM website, just to try and see whether there's really any speed difference.

The DS-5 seems to be just a modified version of Eclipse that uses the ARMCC toolchain, so I installed the ADT plugin. But when I compile using DS-5, it seems that the code is still generated using gcc rather than armcc.

Do you have any idea how to force DS-5 or Eclipse to build the Android native code using armcc? Or is it possible (and how) to build the static NDK libraries from command line and then replace the libraries in my project, so they get deployed to the testing phone?

Answer 1

ARM DS-5 Community Edition doesn't include ARM compiler (armcc).

If you could get hold of armcc best would be to separate your processing heavy algorithms to individual compilation units (separate C files), build them with armcc as you would do for any compilation unit. When you get the object files, convert them into an archive then use that in Android.mk as LOCAL_STATIC_LIBRARIES += <your_archive>.

You can't use armcc plainly to build Android compatible libraries mostly because of Bionic dependencies, I think.

Answer 2

You can use armcc to build Android compatible static libraries even though Android has a different C library (bionic). The key is the --library_interface flag for armcc. According to the documentation:

Use an option of the form --library_interface=aeabi_* when linking with an ABI-compliant C library. Options of the form --library_interface=aeabi_* ensure that the compiler does not generate calls to any optimized functions provided by the ARM C library.

In addition, there are a few more flags to ensure compatibility with the Android EABI resulting in the following command for an Android armeabi-v7a target:
armcc --library_interface=aeabi_clib --wchar32 --enum_is_int --no_hide_all --cpu=7-A --fpu=softvfp+vfpv3 -c -o libfunc.o libfunc.c

You can then use armar --create libfunc.a libfunc.o to create a static library that can be linked with the Android NDK as LOCAL_STATIC_LIBRARIES.

I have successfully tested this with Android NDK r10d on Android KitKat 4.4.2.