Building binary executables for Android in Go

Tue, Jan 26, 2016

I have a use-case to run an external Go binary from within an Android app. By external i mean something that was not bundled inside the APK, but rather (in my case) downloaded from the Internet. The reason for not bundling in-APK is that I need to be able to auto-upgrade the binary without upgrading the APK. APK updates either require user-action or play store or root - all three are not possible for my use-case. I spent an entire day on the issue(android n00b here), which turned out to be a very simple ~~problem~~ solution.

First thing I tried was building normal linux/arm binaries that I use for normal arm devices.

<pre><code>sajal@sajal-lappy:~$ GOARCH="arm" go build /path/to/filewithmain.go
</code></pre>

The generated binary works in general… until you try to access the net… all socket communications are blocked. After trying few random things, I realized its due to me not using the NDK to build it… The binary needs to be built with android/arm target. gomobile to the rescue.

gomobile allows us to either generate an .aar library or an .apk, both are not applicable here. Solution - use the toolchain gomobile installed but compile code by hand.

My compile command :-

sajal@sajal-lappy:~$ GOMOBILE="/home/sajal/go/pkg/gomobile" GOOS=android GOARCH=arm CC=$GOMOBILE/android-ndk-r10e/arm/bin/arm-linux-androideabi-gcc CXX=$GOMOBILE/android-ndk-r10e/arm/bin/arm-linux-androideabi-g++ CGO_ENABLED=1 GOARM=7 go build -p=8 -pkgdir=$GOMOBILE/pkg_android_arm -tags="" -ldflags="-extldflags=-pie" -o minion -x ~/go/src/github.com/turbobytes/pulse/minion.go
sajal@sajal-lappy:~$ file minion
minion: ELF 32-bit LSB  shared object, ARM, EABI5 version 1 (SYSV), dynamically linked (uses shared libs), not stripped
sajal@sajal-lappy:~$ ls -lh minion
- -rwxr-xr-x 1 sajal sajal 9.3M Jan 26 16:52 minion
sajal@sajal-lappy:~$

It took me a while to figure out the -ldflags="-extldflags=-pie" portion, without it my phone complains about binary not being in PIE format.

Now need to wait for android/368 or android/amd64 support in gomobile so I can play with it in the emulator instead of real device…

PS: I know what I am doing is probably an anti-pattern, but this is not a normal end user app. It would run on devices dedicated to this and I will sign and validate downloads.

PSS: I figured this out by mucking around with gomobile using the -x option.

Tags: android go golang gomobile binary
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Sajal Kayan

Building binary executables for Android in Go