rust-ios-android
Example project for building a library for iOS + Android in Rust. macOS is
required for iOS development.
✓ Rust 1.20 – 1.25
✓ Android 4.1 – 8.1 (Jelly Bean – Oreo) (API 16–27)
✓ iOS 7 – 11
(probably works on earlier versions but I don't bother to check 😛)
Note: The purpose of this project is not to create a pure Rust app, but rather
use Rust as a shared native component between the mobile platforms.
Setup
Install the common build tools like C compiler and linker. On macOS, get
Xcode, and install the command line tools.
xcode-select --install
Get Android NDK. We recommend installing it via Android Studio or
sdkmanager:
sdkmanager --verbose ndk-bundle
Otherwise, please define the environment variable $ANDROID_NDK_HOME to the
path of the current version of Android NDK.
export ANDROID_NDK_HOME='/usr/local/opt/android-ndk/android-ndk-r14b/'
Create the standalone NDKs.
./create-ndk-standalone.sh
Download rustup. We will use this to setup Rust for
cross-compiling.
curl https://sh.rustup.rs -sSf | sh
Download targets for iOS and Android.
# iOS. Note: you need *all* five targets
rustup target add aarch64-apple-ios armv7-apple-ios armv7s-apple-ios x86_64-apple-ios i386-apple-ios
# Android.
rustup target add aarch64-linux-android armv7-linux-androideabi i686-linux-android
Copy the content of cargo-config.toml (consists of linker information of
the Android targets) to ~/.cargo/config
cat cargo-config.toml >> ~/.cargo/config
Install cargo-lipo to generate the iOS universal library.
cargo install cargo-lipo
Creating the libraries
You use use the sample/ project as an example. (Note that the sample itself
does not contain proper error checking.)
Write the library and expose a C interface. See the FFI chapter in the Rust
Book for an
introduction.
Expose the Java interface with JNI when target_os="android".
Build the libraries.
cd sample/cargo
# iOS
cargo lipo --release
# Android
cargo build --target aarch64-linux-android --release
cargo build --target armv7-linux-androideabi --release
cargo build --target i686-linux-android --release
cd ../..
Build the Xcode project.
cd sample/ios
xcodebuild -configuration Release -scheme RustSample | xcpretty
cd ../..
When you create an Xcode project yourself, note the following points:
Add the C header rust_regex.h to allow using the Rust functions from C.
Copy target/universal/release/lib???.a to the project. You may need
to modify LIBRARY_SEARCH_PATHS to include the folder of the *.a file.
Note that cargo-lipo does not generate bitcode yet. You must set
ENABLE_BITCODE to NO. (See also http://stackoverflow.com/a/38488617)
You need to link to libresolv.tbd.
Build the Android project.
cd sample/android
./gradlew assembleRelease
cd ../..
When you create an Android Studio project yourself, note the following
points:
Copy or link the *.so into the corresponding src/main/jniLibs folders:
Copy from Rust
Copy to Android
target/armv7-linux-androideabi/release/lib???.so
src/main/jniLibs/armeabi-v7a/lib???.so
target/aarch64-linux-android/release/lib???.so
src/main/jniLibs/arm64-v8a/lib???.so
target/i686-linux-android/release/lib???.so
src/main/jniLibs/x86/lib???.so
Don't forget to ensure the JNI glue between Rust and Java are compatible.