Usage on Android

[megamidge]

How do i go about using this in an Android Xamarin app? I have it working for a Windows Application if i copy out one of the packaged freetype dll's to the output directory, but this isn't so simple on Android.
On Android i get a crash when trying to instantiate the Library object:
System.DllNotFoundException: libfreetype.so.6

Help appreciated.

[HinTak]

You build freetype for android, using the android NDK.

[Robmaister]

Yup, I ship pre-built FreeType dll's on Windows since it needs patching on 64-bit. Android uses FreeType internally but doesn't expose it to apps, so you'll have to build your own. Here's a fairly specific guide that should still work despite the dated NDK version:

https://en.wikibooks.org/wiki/OpenGL_Programming/Installation/Android_NDK#FreeType

Plenty of other guides/articles/repos show up if you look

[megamidge]

Alright thanks, i'll look into this. The problem i had when initially searching was that i just could not find anything that related to FreeType, Android AND Xamarin. As it stands, i don't really find anything for Xamarin + NDK, but i have been able to install NDK. Using it however is proving to be a headache and seems to require to a lot of jumping around :/ Not that is an issue with SharpFont of course.

[megamidge]

I've since hit a wall. I cross-compiled freetype but now have no idea how to use it..
I can't just add "LOCAL_STATIC_LIBRARIES := freetype" to my projects Android.mk, because Xamarin doesn't use that way of building. I thought that perhaps i needed to use ndk-build to build the freetype that i compiled (which doesn't make sense anyway aha), this of course wasn't the answer and did nothing. I'm really at a loss here as to what the next step would be. Sorry to be a hassle

[HinTak]

If you cross compile correctly you should end up with a libfreetype.so.<numbers>. rename and remove the numbers part so it ends in .so. Copy to the same directory as SharpFont.dll.

[megamidge]

I see. So i have an issue that that straight up doesn't exist for me after following the provided link, i'll have a further look around though. Fairly sure i cross-compiled it, just hasn't produced any .so files so perhaps not.

[HinTak]

If you have libtool on your system, the outcome might be hidden in `obj/.libs` (note the "."). Look at the result of ./configure (or the equivalent) and make sure that it says shared library is supported/selected. If it isn't, your build system is not complete.

[megamidge]

Ah yes i seem to have been blind. There is 'libfreetype.so' within my compiled folder as well as my uncompiled freetype. Woops.
Help has been much appreciated.

Will close once confirmed working.

[megamidge]

So it seems i didn't have any 'libfrreetype.so.[X]' but do have one without the number. I added this to my project in /lib/armeabi/ and set it's build action to AndroidNativeLibrary. I still get a crash on the first call inside my DLL that complains about not finding libfreetype.so.6. I had a go about going into the SharpFont.dll.config file and making it look for just libfreetype but this of course did not work.

I have given dropping the libfreetype.so file into the output directory of both my DLL (/bin/Release) and my Android Application (/bin/Debug) where SharpFont.dll is dumped on build, but this hasn't worked either. The only thing i found in my freetype build was pkgconfig which didn't say anything about a shared library, and couldn't find any directory or file name configure or config.

(EDIT)
Was able to reproduce my problem with a new Xamarin Android application that references SharpFont directly.

[megamidge]

I re-tried my process again, based on the link provided again.
I had to run the NDK's make_standalone_toolchain.py in CMD, but the rest i was able to perform in Cygwin.
Everything seemed to build (but again, no freetype.so.[X]). I tried to cut out a SharpFont as a middle man in a test project and put this in my code:
[DllImport("libfreetype.so")] private static extern Error FT_Init_FreeType(out IntPtr alibrary);
Calling this produces the same error as before. In my csproj I have this:
<ItemGroup> <AndroidNativeLibrary Include="C:\NDK\freetype\freetype-2.9.1\objs\.libs\libfreetype.so"> <Abi>armeabi</Abi> </AndroidNativeLibrary> </ItemGroup>

as per this documentation.
The error in the output window is this pastebin.
I'm not sure what's going on but i would think i must be building wrong? But i can't see where im going wrong!