Overview
========
The FreeRDP Android port consists of two parts: the Android Java GUI (client/Android)
and the JNI bindings (client/Android/jni) which are written in C and wrap FreeRDP to
be used with Java. The JNI is directly integrated within FreeRDPs build system.
For building the GUI part there are three possibilities:
* integrated ant build - have cmake to operate ant and build everything
* manual ant build - build JNI with cmake and invoke ant manually for the GUI
* IDE builds using your favourite IDE - use cmake for building JNI and your IDE for GUI
Manual build and IDE build are mostly used for development.
Build requirements
=================
For the Android port some additional dependencies need to be fulfilled:
* for JNI
- Android NDK (>= r8d)
- prebuild static openssl libraries (see below)
* for the Java GUI (if build with ant)
- ant
- Android SDK - version >= 21
FreeRDP requires openssl libraries for building but they are not part of the
Android NDK and therefore they need to be prebuild manually.
Multiple source versions and builds of static openssl libraries are floating around.
At the time of writing we have tested and used:
https://github.com/bmiklautz/Android-external-openssl-ndk-static.
However, any other static build should work as well.
To build openssl:
git clone git@github.com:bmiklautz/Android-external-openssl-ndk-static.git
cd Android-external-openssl-ndk-static
ndk-build # found in the Android NDK
Building
========
Integrated build
----------------
Run the following commands in the top level freerdp directory. Don't
forget to set ANDROID_NDK, ANDROID_SDK and FREERDP_ANDROID_EXTERNAL_SSL_PATH
to the absolut paths on your machine:
cmake -DCMAKE_TOOLCHAIN_FILE=cmake/AndroidToolchain.cmake \
-DANDROID_NDK="_your_ndk_path_here_" \
-DFREERDP_ANDROID_EXTERNAL_SSL_PATH="_your_ssl_build_root_path_" \
-DANDROID_SDK="_your_sdk_path_here_"
make
After that you should have a client/Android/bin/aFreeRDP-debug.apk.
Manual ant builds
-----------------
First run cmake to prepare the build and build JNI.
Don't forget to set ANDROID_NDK, ANDROID_SDK and FREERDP_ANDROID_EXTERNAL_SSL_PATH
to the absolut paths on your machine:
cmake -DCMAKE_TOOLCHAIN_FILE=cmake/AndroidToolchain.cmake \
-DANDROID_NDK="_your_ndk_path_here_" \
-DFREERDP_ANDROID_EXTERNAL_SSL_PATH="_your_ssl_build_root_path_" \
-DANDROID_SDK="_your_sdk_path_here_" -DANDROID_BUILD_JAVA=OFF
make
Now you can run your favourite ant command in client/Android like this:
cd client/Android
ant debug install
Using an IDE
------------
Here is an example on how to use Eclipse for developing/building the Java GUI.
For this the "Android development tools for Eclipse" are required (available via
the eclipse marketplace).
cmake -DCMAKE_TOOLCHAIN_FILE=cmake/AndroidToolchain.cmake \
-DANDROID_NDK="_your_ndk_path_here_" \
-DFREERDP_ANDROID_EXTERNAL_SSL_PATH="_your_ssl_build_root_path_" \
-DANDROID_BUILD_JAVA=OFF
make
Open Eclipse and choose:
File -> Import -> General -> Existing Projects into Workspace
Browse to the client/Android directory in your FreeRDP folder and click finish.
If you get something like "Project 'aFreeRDP' is missing required source
folder: 'gen'" just build the project once and you are good to go.
Side note: If you add -G "Eclipse CDT4 - Unix Makefiles" when running cmake
you can also import FreeRDP into Eclipse too. Then you have one Java project and one c/c++
project you can work on. This requires CDT to be installed in Eclipse.
cmake variables
===============
JNI related
-----------
CMAKE_TOOLCHAIN_FILE
* the toolchain file to use must be cmake/AndroidToolchain.cmake
ANDROID_NDK (used from toolchain file)
* absolute path to the NDK
ANDROID_ABI (used from toolchain file)
* Android ABI to build for (default is armeabi-v7a)
FREERDP_ANDROID_EXTERNAL_SSL_PATH (used by FindOpenSSL)
* absolut root path to the prebuild static openssl libraries
WITH_DEBUG_ANDROID_JNI
- enable debugging for JNI
The libraries must be located in obj/local/armeabi/ or obj/local/armeabi-v7a/.
Cmake searches in armeabi first then armeabi-v7a. It is possible to build FreeRDP
for armeabi-v7a and link against armeabi openssl but not the other way around.
Therefore it is suggested to build openssl for armeabi.
Java GUI related
----------------
ANDROID_BUILD_JAVA (used by client/Android/CMakeLists.txt)
* can be ON/OFF (default OFF) whether or not to build the GUI with cmake
ANDROID_SDK (used by client/Android/CMakeLists.txt)
* absolute path to the Android SDK to use
This is used to generate local.properties needed by ant. Needs to be set
if you build manually with ant or do integrated builds.
Development
===========
Updating JNI headers
--------------------
Whenever the FreeRDP API changes or you need some extra functionality in your Java
GUI the JNI needs to be updated. The JNI headers are generated from the compiled
Java classes:
* edit client/Android/src/com/freerdp/afreerdp/services/LibFreeRDP.Java to
reflect your changes
* build the Android Java project as described above
* run ./scripts/regenerate_JNI_headers.sh from your FreeRDP checkout top level
directory
After that you need to implement the functionality in client/Android/jni/android_freerdp.c and add
the call to client/Android/jni/generated/android_freerdp_jni.c.
After that FreeRDP and the Android package need to be rebuilt to include the latest libfreerdp-android in the package.
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