This project is intended as an example of how to port Linux software for use with the NDK. To build:
NDK=/path/to/ndk ./build_lua.shWithout libreadline support, building Lua is trivial. We create a standalone
toolchain and build all the sources, linking with libm and
libandroid_support. libandroid_support is only needed for supporting devices
older than android-21 (Lollipop).
Lua with libreadline support requires us to also build libreadline and libncurses, and also use a bleeding edge NDK and Android release. We need NDK r15 (at least beta 2, due to release at Google I/O on 17 May 2017), and we need to target Android O. Providing support for old releases of Android is something we will be improving with the NDK compatibility library (see our roadmap for details).
NDK=/path/to/ndk ./build_lua_with_libreadline.shThis command will build Lua and its dependencies for Android. Note that at the time of writing, this will only succeed with a not-yet-released NDK (NDK r15 beta 2, due to release at Google I/O on 17 May 2017) when targeting an unreleased version of Android (Android O). Providing support for old releases of Android is something we will be improving with the NDK compatibility library (see our roadmap for details).
The reason this doesn't work until O is because Android didn't have setpwent
in libc until then.
For more information about what was needed for this port, see the comments in build_lua_with_libreadline.sh.