Android opened - first looks inside

Update (Nov 12 '08) Benno has got android running on Openmoko. Gr8 job!

News of the day! Android is open. First thing after returning from work was setting up the git download and build.

Follow the download and build instructions here.

Tip: If you are running x86_64 box, make sure you install *-devel.i386 packages as well. You will keep getting errors otherwise, that the libraries found in /usr/lib64 weren't deemed good candidates by the build system for linking.

For the description of each subdirectory of the project tree, check this.

The things of interest are the toolchain and location of bare-bones libraries. Toolchains are located inside the prebuilt directory.

mydroid $ prebuilt/linux-x86/toolchain/arm-eabi-4.2.1/arm-eabi/bin/gcc -v
Using built-in specs.
Target: arm-eabi
Configured with: ../../toolchain/android-toolchain/gcc-4.2.1/configure --prefix=/android/mathias/armdev/toolchain-eabi-4.2.1 --program-transform-name=s,^,arm-eabi-, --prefix=/android/mathias/armdev/toolchain-eabi-4.2.1 --target=arm-eabi --host=x86_64-unknown-linux-gnu --build=x86_64-unknown-linux-gnu --enable-languages=c,c++ --disable-libstdc__-v3 --disable-libssp --enable-threads --disable-nls --disable-libmudflap --with-float=soft --with-fpu=vfp --with-arch=armv5te --enable-target-optspace --with-abi=aapcs : (reconfigured) ../../toolchain/android-toolchain/gcc-4.2.1/configure --prefix=/android/mathias/armdev/toolchain-eabi-4.2.1 --program-transform-name=s,^,arm-eabi-, --prefix=/android/mathias/armdev/toolchain-eabi-4.2.1 --target=arm-eabi --host=x86_64-unknown-linux-gnu --build=x86_64-unknown-linux-gnu --enable-languages=c,c++ --disable-libstdc__-v3 --disable-libssp --enable-threads --disable-nls --disable-libmudflap --with-float=soft --with-fpu=vfp --with-arch=armv5te --enable-target-optspace --with-abi=aapcs
Thread model: single
gcc version 4.2.1

The basic libraries are available under bionic subdirectory:
bionic/
bionic/libthread_db
bionic/linker
bionic/libdl
bionic/libstdc++
bionic/.git
bionic/libm
bionic/libc

After your build is successful, the android binaries should be available under out/target/product/generic/obj/lib/

mydroid $ file out/target/product/generic/obj/lib/libc.so
out/target/product/generic/obj/lib/libc.so: ELF 32-bit LSB shared object, ARM, version 1 (SYSV), stripped

I tried to compile a simple helloworld.c, but no luck :(

mydroid $ PATH=./prebuilt/linux-x86/toolchain/arm-eabi-4.2.1/libexec/gcc/arm-eabi/4.2.1:prebuilt/linux-x86/toolchain/arm-eabi-4.2.1/arm-eabi/bin/gcc:$PATH prebuilt/linux-x86/toolchain/arm-eabi-4.2.1/arm-eabi/bin/gcc hellodroid.c
Assembler messages:
Fatal error: Invalid -march= option: `armv5te'

I can't wait until someone compiles python with this toolchain. I don't have enough time and know-how in how to arrange this toolchain in a manner so that Python's autotools can compile in it. Hopefully scratchbox or OpenEmbedded people will take up that task and we will soon have a Pydroid.