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1Application.mk file syntax specification
2
3Introduction:
4-------------
5
6This document describes the syntax of Application.mk build files
7written to describe the native modules required by your Android
8application. To understand what follows, it is assumed that you have
9read the docs/OVERVIEW.TXT file that explains their role and
10usage.
11
12Readers of this document should have read docs/OVERVIEW.TXT and
13docs/ANDROID-MK.TXT
14
15
16Overview:
17---------
18
19The purpose of Application.mk is to describe which native
20'modules' (i.e. static/shared libraries) are needed by your
21application.
22
23Each Application.mk must be placed under a sub-directory of
24the top-level apps directory, e.g.:
25
26   $NDK/apps/<myapp>/Application.mk
27
28Where <myapp> is a short name used to describe your 'application'
29to the NDK build system (this name doesn't go into your generated
30shared libraries or your final packages).
31
32The Application.mk is really a tiny GNU Makefile fragment that must
33define a few variables:
34
35APP_MODULES
36    This variable is mandatory and lists all the native modules
37    (described through Android.mk files) that your application
38    requires.
39
40    This must be a space-separated list of module names as they
41    appear in the LOCAL_MODULE definitions of Android.mk files
42
43APP_PROJECT_PATH
44    This variable is mandatory and should give the *absolute*
45    path to your Application's project root directory. This is used
46    to copy/install stripped versions of the generated JNI shared
47    libraries to a specific location known to the APK-generating tools.
48
49APP_OPTIM
50    This optional variable can be defined to either 'release' or
51    'debug'. This is used to alter the optimization level when
52    building your application's modules.
53
54    A 'release' mode is the default, and will generate highly
55    optimized binaries. The 'debug' mode will generate un-optimized
56    binaries which are much easier to debug.
57
58    Note that it is possible to debug both 'release' and 'debug'
59    binaries, but the 'release' builds tend to provide less information
60    during debugging sessions: some variables are optimized out and
61    can't be inspected, code re-ordering can make stepping through
62    the code difficult, stack traces may not be reliable, etc...
63
64APP_CFLAGS
65    A set of C compiler flags passed when compiling any C or C++ source code
66    of any of the modules. This can be used to change the build of a given
67    module depending on the application that needs it, instead of modifying
68    the Android.mk file itself.
69
70    IMPORTANT WARNING: +++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++
71    +
72    + All paths in these flags should be relative to the top-level NDK
73    + directory. For example, if you have the following setup:
74    +
75    +    sources/foo/Android.mk
76    +    sources/bar/Android.mk
77    +
78    + To specify in foo/Android.mk that you want to add the path to the
79    + 'bar' sources during compilation, you should use:
80    +
81    +   APP_CFLAGS += -Isources/bar
82    +
83    + Or alternatively:
84    +
85    +   APP_CFLAGS += -I$(LOCAL_PATH)/../bar
86    +
87    + Using '-I../bar' will *NOT* work since it will be equivalent to
88    + '-I$NDK_ROOT/../bar' instead.
89    +
90    +++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++
91
92    NOTE: In android-ndk-1.5_r1, this only applied to C sources, not C++ ones.
93          This has been corrected to match the full Android build system.
94
95APP_CXXFLAGS
96    An alias for APP_CPPFLAGS, to be considered obsolete as it may disappear
97    in a future release of the NDK.
98
99APP_CPPFLAGS
100    A set of C++ compiler flags passed when building C++ sources *only*.
101
102    NOTE: In android-ndk-1.5_r1, this applied to both C and C++ sources.
103          This has been corrected to match the full Android build system.
104          You can now use APP_CFLAGS for flags that shall apply to C and
105          C++ souces.
106
107APP_BUILD_SCRIPT
108    By default, the NDK build system will look for a file named Android.mk
109    under $(APP_PROJECT_PATH)/jni, i.e. for the file:
110
111       $(APP_PROJECT_PATH)/jni/Android.mk
112
113    If you want to override this behaviour, you can define APP_BUILD_SCRIPT
114    to point to an alternate build script. A non-absolute path will always
115    be interpreated as relative to the NDK's top-level directory.
116
117A trivial Application.mk file would be:
118
119-------------- cut here -------------------------
120APP_MODULES      := <list of modules>
121APP_PROJECT_PATH := <path to project>
122-------------- cut here -------------------------
123