Skip to content

Latest commit

 

History

History
98 lines (79 loc) · 4.1 KB

README.md

File metadata and controls

98 lines (79 loc) · 4.1 KB
Raw

GHC cross compiler for Android NDK

This repository contains a build script intended to build a version of GHC (the Glorious Glasgow Haskell Compilation System) capable of compiling executables compatible with an existing installation of the Android NDK.

License warning for executables built using toolchains built by this script

The way this script currently works involves compiling static versions of libiconv, GMP, and ncurses, which GHC-compiled programs may link against in the target environment. As of this writing, ncurses is released under an MIT-style liberal license, but libiconv and GMP are released under versions of the LGPL. THIS MAY HAVE COPYRIGHT IMPLICATIONS FOR YOUR APPLICATION.

If your application is libre software and/or open source, you are probably fine. If your application is proprietary, then the most usual way to comply with the LGPL would be to dynamically link with these libraries—but this is difficult to support via the Android NDK and seems to be discouraged. Alternatively, you may be compelled to modify your build process to also be able to provide object code that recipients can freely relink with different versions of libiconv and/or GMP and install in place of the original code. This script does not directly support any of these types of functionality at the moment. If you are worried about this, you should inspect the source code of this script carefully, as well as the licenses of all the dependencies it uses, and decide for yourself.

Prerequisites

The current script only supports GNU/Linux (aka most full “Linux”) host systems. It assumes the host has:

  • Perl >= 5.14
  • An Android NDK with at least a GCC 4.9 toolchain, accessible via $NDK_ROOT (variable name unstable!)
  • An Android SDK accessible via $ANDROID_SDK_HOME (variable name unstable!)
  • GNU tar, accessible as ‘tar’
  • GNU make, accessible as ‘make’
  • Automake, with a directory of support files accessible in /usr/share/automake-VERSION
  • For GHC build dependencies:
    • a host (non-cross) GHC
    • Happy and Alex
  • For LLVM build dependencies:
    • Python 2, accessible as ‘python2’ (preferred) or ‘python’
  • If you want to automatically download source archives:
    • curl

See the “Setting up a Linux system for building GHC” page for more details on what GHC builds need.

The following build dependencies are handled by this script and do not need to be present on the host, as the development files are installed into the cross-environment:

  • ncurses
  • libiconv
  • GMP

Run the script with --help for more information on command line options.

Test configurations

This appears to more or less work on:

  • (2014-12-07) (tested by Drake Wilson) Arch Linux i686, NDK r10c, host GHC 7.8.3

Success/failure reports for other systems are welcomed.

Future

  • Needs Cabal integration.
  • Should support LWP for automatic downloads, not just curl.
  • Should support LLVM-based Android toolchains, not just GCC-based ones.
  • Various things should be less hardcoded.
  • Should have offline-readable command line option documentation.
  • Determine whether the SDK and NDK top directory environment variable names are actually the conventional ones; the provenance of these ones is uncertain and this seems almost undocumented.

License and acknowledgments for this script

This script was originally written by Drake Wilson. It is in the public domain. It is not the first or the only build script with its intent. It was mostly written using knowledge gained directly from attempting to manually build a cross-compiling GHC with the NDK, but some of it may have been affected by memory of results from attempting to analyze and/or run the ghc-android script in neurocyte's repository, which see for its contributor list. This script does not share any code with that script, and the author believes that no copyright implications flow from this.