Enabling aarch64 as a host architecture for Android Build (WIP)
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Preface
As a key step in the Portage-powered Android project, we need the ability to build Android on an aarch64 host (not necessarily Android, as Gentoo which is beneath Android is essentially a normal aarch64 host now) so that we can build the system on the phone itself. However, the current Android build system assumes one of the following types of build hosts:
- Linux on AMD64
- Darwin on AMD64
We need to add aarch64 and arm (32bit variant) toolchain support into the build system. Google originally provieded toolchain support by shipping prebuilt toolchains with the AOSP project; apparently we have to use local toolchains or build cross-compile toolchains on our own. This article logs modifications to the AOSP build system (${T}/build) to accomodate system toolchain into the build system. All source modifications can be found in my forked repositories, which all came from Lineage OS project originally.
Get the build system to recognize aarch64 as a valid HOST arch
The repository build/make holds core makefiles that describe how the build system works. The following code in build/make/core/envsetup.mk defines the HOST_ARCH section for the build host:
# HOST_ARCH
ifneq (,$(findstring x86_64,$(UNAME)))
HOST_ARCH := x86_64
HOST_2ND_ARCH := x86
HOST_IS_64_BIT := true
else
ifneq (,$(findstring i686,$(UNAME))$(findstring x86,$(UNAME)))
$(error Building on a 32-bit x86 host is not supported: $(UNAME)!)
endif
endif
Add aarch64 as a host architecture and arm as its secondary architecture to make the build system aware that aarch64 is a valid HOST for building.
Use host Go toolchain
Google has shipped prebuilt Go toolchains for linux-x86 and darwin-x86, just like they did with C/C++. We'll use the system toolchain from Portage instead. Emerge dev-lang/go, then edit the toolchain paths in build/soong, specifically GOROOT, to utilize the system toolchain:
TODO: source code quote here
Use system Ninja for building
Google shipped Ninja as well. Emerge dev-util/ninja and then edit the following in build/blueprint to use system ninja:
TODO: source code quote here
Install Java toolchain
An Android build requires a Java toolchain to be installed. Google does not bundle it this time: we're required to install it on the system, and the build system will try to locate it automatically at runtime. Fortunately, Gentoo has provided a binary package (!!) for OpenJDK (icedtea in this case), named dev-java/icedtea-bin. We just have to install this package. To avoid unnecessary dependencies getting pulled in, configure the use flags for dev-java/icedtea-bin as follows:
dev-java/icedtea-bin headless-awt -alsa -cups -gtk -webstart
Then emerge virtual/jdk. More information can be found on the Java page on Gentoo Wiki.
Configure C/C++ toolchain
The hardest part is actually the C/C++ toolchain. The topic is discussed in a separate article: C/C++ Toolchain for Android Build on aarch64 (WIP). The article briefly introduces toolchains involved in the building process. It then describes means to get them work locally on aarch64. Finally, the article describes how to accomodate the toolchains with aarch64 as the host architecture into the Soong build system (path build/soong/cc/config to be specific).