[CMake] [cmake-developers] CMake integration in Gradle (Android Studio)

Tue Nov 1 11:30:03 EDT 2016

It's my experience which maybe help.

I love Android Studio for its jetbrains style coding experience, but
with some bad style I don't like, like so frequency update and so many
experiment feature which sometimes is a good part like CMake support!

I just love coding and focus my project, but the none product ready
feature make me must fix some ide problem, SDK problem, config problem
is really bad!

So I use CLion to do most c++ related idea test which is mainly focus
c++ native part, and test mix program in a simple java program, all
the technology I use is CMake with CMake Swig support and CMake Java
support which works well in CLion

After the c++ part test is finish, I rewrite some code( mostly just
copy from clion project)  in Android Studio(this make c++ related
works easy in the c++ unfriendly support environment), and then focus
on java side.

If c++ part has problem I will reenter the workflow to test idea in CLion again.

My current working android project use CMake with CMake Swig support,
it's really works great!

Hope this help:)

2016-11-01 21:38 GMT+08:00 Robert Dailey <rcdailey.lists at gmail.com>:
> Florent, I had the same thoughts. It seems that the CMake generate +
> build step happen silently as a prerequisite step when doing the
> 'gradle build' command somewhere. It makes it appear as if CMake is
> not running at all, but instead the Java piece of the build is just
> taking forever.
>
> Really I want to get away from ant / eclipse, but unlike Android
> Studio, at least in Eclipse I can view C++ code and edit it. I don't
> know of any other IDE I can use to edit both java & android code. My
> last shining hope is perhaps Visual Studio 2015 and their Android
> support. They have a fork of the CMake repository with some changes
> for generating Android IDE projects for VS, I have not tried it
> though.
>
> What a giant mess this has become... I have no idea what direction to
> go on this. Advice on tooling combinations you guys are using would be
> very helpful though.
>
> On Mon, Oct 31, 2016 at 5:04 PM, Florent Castelli
> <florent.castelli at gmail.com> wrote:
>> I tried the Gradle + CMake integration and I'm not really impressed.
>> I would recommend not using it right now until they fix the rough edges.
>>
>> The prime concern is that it is REALLY hard to get the CMake output and
>> compilation output,
>> even within Android Studio. If you compile from command line, you won't see
>> much.
>> This is a no go for CI environments where you need to see what went wrong
>> and also some
>> output once in a while (or builds are usually considered stuck and canceled
>> if they take too long).
>> See the issue: https://code.google.com/p/android/issues/detail?id=210930
>>
>> Installing CMake within the SDK is not trivial. There's an open bug with a
>> proposed solution,
>> it's not pretty stuff but does the work:
>> https://code.google.com/p/android/issues/detail?id=221907
>> An alternative would be to repackage your SDK folder after running Android
>> Studio and installing
>> everything you need and distribute that to your CI build machines /
>> developer machines.
>>
>> But essentially, what you want is probably just use their toolchain file,
>> which is much better
>> than the OpenCV one. You can find it bundled in the latest NDK and I guess
>> you could be using
>> that directly with CMake. If it is doing weird things, I guess you could
>> have a look at it and debug it.
>> It's not as complicated as the OpenCV one and I hope you'll find the
>> solution to your issues!
>>
>> As for CMake 3.7, when I asked about it in this mailing list, someone said
>> there will be
>> a compatibility layer to the toolchain to reuse the upstream support when
>> it's available
>> if I remember correctly.
>>
>> /Florent
>>
>>
>> On 25/10/2016 15:48, Robert Dailey wrote:
>>>
>>> I'm not sure if the CMake mailing lists are the right place to ask
>>> this question but I thought I'd ask just in case someone has gone down
>>> this path or has experience with what Google/Gradle is actually trying
>>> to accomplish with what seems to be a hand-built version of CMake with
>>> custom patches that are not in upstream repositories.
>>>
>>> Prior to switching to Android Studio / Gradle, I was using Eclipse /
>>> Ant. The way I did CMake integration was not really integration at
>>> all: I generated Ninja build scripts using CMake and implemented
>>> custom targets to run "ant release" after all the C++ projects were
>>> built. I made sure that CMake copied relevant *.so files to
>>> appropriate directories in the Ant structure so they are packaged with
>>> built APKs. That's how I did my Android development.
>>>
>>> Now that I'm integrating CMake into Gradle, first annoyance I noticed
>>> is that I can't use CMake 3.7 (or any external installation of CMake)
>>> with Android Studio. It requires a version of CMake installed through
>>> SDK Manager. This means I can't use the new Android toolchain
>>> functionality built into CMake 3.7 (sad face). But this is something I
>>> can work around...
>>>
>>> Next I found out that stuff I'm setting in my CMake scripts, such as
>>> CPP flags like `-std=c++14` and `-fexceptions` was not being applied.
>>> For whatever reason, Gradle is overriding these from the command line
>>> (I'm guessing?). So this requires me to duplicate the toolchain /
>>> compiler flag setup I already do in my CMake scripts now in the Gradle
>>> build scripts. This seems completely unnecessary and a maintenance
>>> burden.
>>>
>>> What I was expecting Gradle to do was essentially provide me some
>>> toolchain file so that CMake can find the compiler and linker to use
>>> and then the rest would be determined by CMake itself.
>>>
>>> Is there a way I can tell Gradle to not take so much control over
>>> compiler flags? I want my CMake scripts to do this. I can't imagine
>>> they had a good reason to do this. What have others done in this
>>> situation with their own Gradle + CMake integration? Looking for
>>> advice here, since information is sparse, especially since the Android
>>> Studio 2.2 CMake integration is relatively new stuff.
>>
>>
>>
> --
>
> Powered by www.kitware.com
>
> Please keep messages on-topic and check the CMake FAQ at: http://www.cmake.org/Wiki/CMake_FAQ
>
> Kitware offers various services to support the CMake community. For more information on each offering, please visit:
>
> CMake Support: http://cmake.org/cmake/help/support.html
> CMake Consulting: http://cmake.org/cmake/help/consulting.html
> CMake Training Courses: http://cmake.org/cmake/help/training.html
>
> Visit other Kitware open-source projects at http://www.kitware.com/opensource/opensource.html
>
> Follow this link to subscribe/unsubscribe:
> http://public.kitware.com/mailman/listinfo/cmake-developers