csound-android

Michael Gogins
https://github.com/gogins
http://michaelgogins.tumblr.com

Introduction

This repository contains Csound for Android: almost all features of Csound, in an Android app with a built-in code editor that also integrates Csound with HTML5 and JavaScript.

Csound for Android used to live in the csound-extended repository, but has been moved here into its own repository for easier maintenance.

For earlier releases and tags, please use csound-extended

This repository uses the core Csound packages, and some other third-party dependencies, as Git submodules, packages, or direct source downloads. These dependencies are rebuilt using the Android NDK.

See https://github.com/gogins/csound-android/commits/develop for the commit log.

Please log any bug reports or requests for enhancements at https://github.com/gogins/csound-android/issues.

Supported Platforms

The Csound for Android app is built for 64 bit CPU architectures only. The app runs on the following platforms:

• Devices running Android 5.1 or later with the following application binary interfaces (ABIs):

  • armeabi-v7a
  • arm64-v8a
  • x86_64

For those wishing to develop the same Csound compositions on both Android and desktop computers, various Android emulators should work. The Android emulator that comes with Android Studio does work, and is recommended, but others also should work.

Installation

The Csound for Android app is available from the Google Play Store, or may be installed from the CsoundApplication-release.apk package released from this repository, or may be installed from a local build of the .apk file.

Building

First, please understand some general features of the build system, which otherwise might seem odd. Some details are provided below, but in general, all native build steps are performed by shell scripts calling ndk-build and SWIG, as integrating these steps into Android Studio would be complex. Only once all native libraries have been built and installed, can the Csound for Android app be built in Android Studio.

First clone the Git repository at https://github.com/gogins/csound-android.

Please note, some NDK dependencies are built in their own subdirectories, and some are built in OTHER subdirectories with their own makefiles that refer to source files in the ORIGINAL subdirectories. There is a naming convention, e.g. link is the original Git repository for the Ableton Link Kit which we do not build, and link-opcodes is our subdirectory which we do build and which includes files from the link subdirectory.

Prerequisites for building Csound for Android include:

1. You must install up to date versions of Android Studio, Android SDK, and the current SDK, GDB, LLDB, the NDK, and build tools. Install these using Android Studio's SDK Manager.

2. In order to enable local NDK builds (i.e. in individual subdirectories), you must set the following environment variables, probably in your .profile script:

   2.1. ANDROID_NDK_ROOT with the full pathname of your Android Native Development kit, typically $ANDROID_SDK_ROOT/ndk/{version-number}.

   2.2. ANDROID_SDK_ROOT with the full pathname of your Android Software Development kit, perhaps something like ~/Android/sdk.

   2.3. NDK_MODULE_PATH with the full pathname to this repository's CsoundForAndroid/ndk-libraries subdirectory.

To build for Android on Linux or macOS for the first time, change to the CsoundForAndroid subdirectory of this repository and execute bash fresh-build-android.sh, which does the following:

1. Execute bash update-dependencies. Do this periodically or whenever you think a dependency has changed.

2. In the ndk-libraries/csound/include directory, create a valid version.h file from version.h.in, and a valid float-version.h from float-version.h.in.

3. Execute bash build-android.sh. The build system compiles all native libraries, including the Csound library libcsoundandroid.so and its plugin opcode libraries, required by the Csound for Android app, and copies them to the appropriate subdirectories for further building and packaging.

Run Android Studio and load the CsoundForAndroid/build.gradle project.

Attach an Android device, enable USB debugging on it, and run or debug the CsoundApplication project.

If you need to make a production build, apply to me for the signing key, build for release, and generate a signed .aab or .apk. The signing key should be placed in the csound-android/CsoundForAndroid/CsoundForAndroid directory.