raylib-zig Android build template

This is a template for building a raylib-zig game for android, please note that the solution is extremely wacky and anything can fail.

Requirements

• Android NDK
• Gradle
• A Raylib .a file compiled for Android (Depending on target archtitecture)

Note

armv7 is not properly tested since i don't have an armv7 android 10+ device (see below)

Android requirements

• Android 10 or higher
  • It may probably run on older devices, but LLVM builds and expects native thread-local storage, so runtime crash with unknown reloc type 17 @ 0x9c436c64 (531), and even assigning __gshared to everything, not even the simplest example runs, failing with dlopen failed: cannot locate symbol "pthread_attr_setinheritsched" (Android 9+).

Prepare

Compile Raylib

1. Clone and build raylib

git clone https://github.com/raysan5/raylib
cd raylib/src

make PLATFORM=PLATFORM_ANDROID \
     ANDROID_NDK=/path/to/your/android-ndk \
     ANDROID_ARCH=arm64 \
     ANDROID_API_VERSION=29

Replace aarch64 to x86_64 or arm if needed

2. Place your raylib in raylib-android according to the desired archtitecture, for example:

-> tree raylib-android/
raylib-android/
├── arm64-v8a
│   └── libraylib.a
└── x86_64
    └── libraylib.a

3. Add submodule

git submodule add https://github.com/zariep-software/raylib-zig-android-template.git vendor/raylib-zig-android

4. Define environment variables

export ANDROID_NDK_HOME=/opt/android-ndk
export RAYLIB_LIB_DIR=/home/user/raylib-android/
export ANDROID_OUTPUT_DIR=/path/to/your/apk/setup/

Replace those paths with the actual paths, or copy asetup.example to asetup.sh and edit it. build-android.zig loads simple KEY=VALUE lines from asetup.sh automatically if the file exists, and expands $VAR, ${VAR}, and a leading ~ (e.g. $USER, $HOME) the same way a shell would.

5. Copy examples/build.zig or adapt it to your project

Try to build

zig build android -Dabi=arm64-v8a

To build for multiple architectures in one go just call it once per ABI, Each run writes its output to android/app/src/main/jniLibs/<ABI>/libmain.so, so subsequent runs for different ABIs don't overwrite each other. The resulting jniLibs/ tree can then be picked up as is by a single Gradle build producing a multi-ABI APK/AAB.

gradle wrapper # You may need to get gradlew jar first time

./gradlew assembleDebug

More Information

More information about setting up a game for android in raylib-zig (e.g. Setting up / troubleshoot things like rotation, Touch screen or screen size) available on the wiki