Allow configuring ndk build architectures #31232

janicduplessis · 2021-03-25T00:56:17Z

Summary

Building from source in debug takes a very long time because native builds need to run for all supported architectures. It is possible to check which architecture the devices for which we are about to launch the app on are and build only for those. For most cases we can reduce the number of architectures we build for to 1 instead of 4, resulting in a large speedup of the build.

This is inspired by iOS which has a "Build for active architecture only" option. Since android doesn't really support this natively we can implement it here and also in react-native by reading the build properties that we pass and alter the abi we build for.

With fabric / codegen coming up I suspect that we might want to default to building c++ soon. This should ease the transition as builds won't be orders of magnitude slower.

See react-native-community/cli#1388 for more context and how we use this new config to automatically detect running emulator architectures.

Changelog

[Android] [Added] - Allow configuring ndk build architectures

Test Plan

Tested by setting reactNativeDebugArchitectures with different values in gradle.properties. Checked the build logs to see which architectures are being built. Also made sure release builds are not affected by this value.

Clean build

reactNativeDebugArchitectures not set
824.41s

reactNativeDebugArchitectures=x86
299.77s

analysis-bot · 2021-03-25T01:21:54Z

Platform	Engine	Arch	Size (bytes)	Diff
ios	-	universal	n/a	--

Base commit: ebe939b

ReactAndroid/build.gradle

janicduplessis · 2021-03-25T18:21:06Z

packages/rn-tester/android/app/build.gradle

@@ -254,7 +264,6 @@ if (enableCodegen) {
        defaultConfig {
            externalNativeBuild {
                ndkBuild {
-                    abiFilters "armeabi-v7a", "x86", "x86_64", "arm64-v8a"


This is the default already according to https://developer.android.com/ndk/guides/abis. This will use the project wide config added a few lines up.

analysis-bot · 2021-07-06T19:34:14Z

Platform	Engine	Arch	Size (bytes)	Diff
android	hermes	arm64-v8a	9,120,527	+391
android	hermes	armeabi-v7a	8,646,426	+259
android	hermes	x86	9,559,730	+258
android	hermes	x86_64	9,525,889	+243
android	jsc	arm64-v8a	10,762,975	+132
android	jsc	armeabi-v7a	9,680,129	-7
android	jsc	x86	10,797,576	-6
android	jsc	x86_64	11,405,238	-32

Base commit: bc1e602

ShikaSD

Awesome!
I was manually hardcoding splits before for testing, but that is definitely better 🙂
I added a couple of comments/questions about debug mode handling.

ReactAndroid/build.gradle

ShikaSD · 2021-07-07T10:58:05Z

ReactAndroid/build.gradle

+        it.args.any { it.endsWith("Debug") }
+    }
+    def value = project.getProperties().get("reactNativeDebugArchitectures")
+    return value != null && isDebug ? value : "all"


Is "all" value valid for the abiFilters block? From the documentation, I only see it used for ndk-build.

This one is only used with ndk-build so the all value is fine.

ShikaSD · 2021-07-07T10:59:49Z

ReactAndroid/build.gradle

@@ -355,6 +363,7 @@ def buildReactNdkLib = tasks.register("buildReactNdkLib", Exec) {
    inputs.dir("src/main/java/com/facebook/react/modules/blob")
    outputs.dir("$buildDir/react-ndk/all")
    commandLine(getNdkBuildFullPath(),
+            "APP_ABI=${reactNativeArchitectures()}",


Maybe safeguard the debug version here as well? 🙂

I don't think this is needed since reactNativeArchitectures does the debug check already and is only used here. It will always return 'all' for non-debug builds.

Yep, my intention is to avoid hacking the debug check based on the task name and use flags from the build task itself, that's why I am asking about it :)

I agree, I tried finding a better way to detect wether it was a debug or release build but could not find it. The task is the same for both build types so at that point from what I could see it is not possible to know without the gradle invocation args.

One more involved solution that I could see is create a different task per variant for buildReactNdkLib, but not sure if that would be worth changing for this.

Ah, I see it now, didn't realize we always compile the build with NDK_DEBUG set to 0. I guess it doesn't matter much for this module now, as we build everything on the CI anyways and distribute binaries only.

janicduplessis · 2021-07-07T15:48:55Z

We currently have 2 different type of c++ builds, the main one invokes ndk-build directly and the codegen one uses gradle externalNativeBuild. abiFilters will only work for the codegen build so this is why we have 2 different handling of the achitectures value (reactNativeArchitectures method in ReactAndroid.gradle vs using abiFilters in rn-tester / app template).

ShikaSD · 2021-07-07T16:52:42Z

We currently have 2 different type of c++ builds, the main one invokes ndk-build directly and the codegen one uses gradle externalNativeBuild.

I think ndk-build also has the debug parameter passed somewhere, so maybe we can ensure correct abi there?

janicduplessis · 2021-07-07T17:02:08Z

AFAIK there is NDK_DEBUG, but it is not based on gradle build type, we set it here https://github.com/facebook/react-native/blob/master/ReactAndroid/build.gradle#L358 based on https://github.com/facebook/react-native/blob/master/ReactAndroid/build.gradle#L43. From what I understand NDK_DEBUG will always be false unless NATIVE_BUILD_TYPE env is set.

facebook-github-bot · 2021-07-08T13:32:24Z

@ShikaSD has imported this pull request. If you are a Facebook employee, you can view this diff on Phabricator.

facebook-github-bot · 2021-07-12T16:53:43Z

@ShikaSD merged this pull request in d6ed1ff.

facebook-github-bot added Contributor A React Native contributor. CLA Signed This label is managed by the Facebook bot. Authors need to sign the CLA before a PR can be reviewed. labels Mar 25, 2021

janicduplessis mentioned this pull request Mar 25, 2021

feat: add option to build only active architectures on android react-native-community/cli#1388

Merged

janicduplessis marked this pull request as ready for review March 25, 2021 18:16

janicduplessis commented Mar 25, 2021

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janicduplessis commented Mar 25, 2021

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Allow configuring ndk build architectures

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janicduplessis force-pushed the active-arch branch from 7009676 to 81a93ad Compare July 6, 2021 18:52

Update template

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TheSavior added the Needs: React Native Team Attention label Jul 6, 2021

ShikaSD reviewed Jul 7, 2021

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ShikaSD approved these changes Jul 8, 2021

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facebook-github-bot closed this in d6ed1ff Jul 12, 2021

facebook-github-bot added the Merged This PR has been merged. label Jul 12, 2021

janicduplessis deleted the active-arch branch August 19, 2021 18:08

fabOnReact mentioned this pull request Feb 25, 2022

Speed Up reactnative build from source fabOnReact/react-native-notes#11

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Allow configuring ndk build architectures #31232

Allow configuring ndk build architectures #31232

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Allow configuring ndk build architectures #31232

Allow configuring ndk build architectures #31232

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janicduplessis commented Mar 25, 2021 • edited

Summary

Changelog

Test Plan

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