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Setting up SDL3 for Android

Setting up CMake, MinGW, Android SDK, NDK, and JDK

• You can download Qt 6.6.3 (archive - 1.34 GB, unzipped - 4 GB). It contains CMake 3.37, MinGW 11.2, and Ninja. Unzip it to the C drive. Add the same paths to the PATH:

C:\Qt\Tools\CMake_64\bin
C:\Qt\Tools\mingw1120_64\bin
E:\Program Files\Java\jdk-17\bin
C:\Qt\6.6.3\mingw_64\bin

• Run Qt Creator, and install JDK and Android SDK from the menu: "Edit" > "Preferences..." > "Devices" (on the left panel) > the "Android" tab
• Press the "SDK Manager" button like on the screenshot below to install NDK and another packages:

• Install the following packages from the "SDK Manager":


• Press the "Apply" button
• Ignore the following message by pressing on the "Cancel" button:

Draw a simple triangle on Android using OpenGL ES 2.0

• Download the example from GitHub
• Unzip the downloaded example somewhere
• Note. The prebuilt "SDL3-3.1.3.aar" was downloaded from the release page and copied to the "app/libs" folder
• Open the "app/build.gradle". Choose what ABI you want to use. For example, "arm64-v8a" for new devices, "armeabi-v7a" is for an old ones, "x86" and "x86_64" - for the Android emulator:

cmake {
    arguments '-DANDROID_STL=c++_shared', '-DWITH_IMAGE=OFF', '-DWITH_MIXER=OFF'
    // abiFilters 'armeabi-v7a', 'arm64-v8a', 'x86', 'x86_64'
    abiFilters 'armeabi-v7a'
}

• Open the command line terminal inside of the root folder of the example
• Copy and paste the following command to CMD: gradlew assembleDebug
• It requires ~10 minutes for the first build and 20 seconds for the next builds when you change a code in the "main.cpp" file
• The generated APK file will be here: "app/build/outputs/apk/debug/app-debug.apk" - 4.5 MB
• The following command is for installing APK-file that connected via USB-cable: gradlew installDebug
• Important! If you changed a project name inside of the "CMakeLists.txt" here:

# Declare the project
project(my_project)

• then you should write the same name here in the .java file that is located here "app\src\main\java\com\example\sdlcross" inside of the "getLibraries()" method:

package com.example.sdlcross;

import org.libsdl.app.SDLActivity;

public class MyActivity extends SDLActivity {
    protected String[] getLibraries() {
        return new String[] { "my_project" };
    }
}

Based on the Discord discussion

How to build SDL3-3.1.3.aar yourself from sources

• Download "SDL3-3.1.3.tar.xz" here: https://github.com/libsdl-org/SDL/releases/tag/preview-3.1.3 (don't download "Source code (zip)" because it was generated by Github and this one will not work for Android)
• Unzip "SDL3-3.1.3.tar.xz" somewhere
• Download and install Python 3.12 or newer version, for example: Windows embeddable package
• Go to the "SDL3-3.1.3" folder from CMD
• Note. You can disable the ABI's that you don't need in the "build-scripts/build-release.py". It allows to build in 4m 25s and SDL3-3.1.2.aar will have 3.65 MB instead of 12.9 MB. Like this:

ANDROID_AVAILABLE_ABIS = [
    "armeabi-v7a"
    #"arm64-v8a",
    #"x86",
    #"x86_64",
]

• Run: python build-scripts/build-release.py --create android --project SDL3 --force
• The "SDL3-3.1.3.aar" file will be generated here in the "dist" folder

Based on the Discord discussion