[fpc-devel] rev 19036 breaks the Android cross-compiler

[Sven Barth]

Am 16.11.2011 11:45, schrieb Michael Schnell:
> On 11/15/2011 09:12 PM, Jonas Maebe wrote:
>> Android isn't a different architecture (if you consider native
>> applications), but a different OS. It uses a Linux kernel (although
>> even that one is heavily patched, afaik), and user land is obviously
>> quite different (including the C library and the dynamic linker).
>>
> Do you suggest that the normal Linux Kernel API is not available for a
> native code application running in an Android device ?

Google does not state that its OS is Linux compatible, thus in theory 
they can add, modify or delete syscalls of the OS. While an addition is 
no problem for FPC and its RTL, a modification or deletion is.

> Do you suggest that a native code application running in an Android
> device can't use the normal gnu libc API ?

Android has a libc (called 'bionic'), but it might not be entirely 
compatible to the GNU one, thus unexpected errors in the libc variant of 
FPC's RTL could happen and this should be taken care of.

And these two points explain why its not trivial or risk free to use 
stock FPC for Android.

> Do you suggest (many of the) normal gnu (command-line) tools (that
> usually run on i/o pipes) can't be installed on an Android device ?

Such command line tools might be used, but they need to be recompiled. 
For C based application this is simple, because they just need to use 
the correct headers, but for FPC there might be the posibility that one 
must port some functions.

Regards,
Sven