Compile SFML for Android on Windows

1. Get the Tools

This are the tools you need to build SFML for Android on a Windows Machine

CMake
Git
Android SDK
Android NDK
Apache Ant
MinGW (msys basic)
Java jre
Java jdk
Android USB Driver (Download: https://adbdriver.com/ )

Make sure you’ve installed all tools (Tools -> Android SDK Tools / Platform-tools / Build-tools) in the Android SDK Manager.

If you have installed Visual Studio 2015 you might got some tools from above alerady. If so here are the default directories Visual Studio will put them:

Android NDK: C:\ProgramData\Microsoft\AndroidNDK (or AndroidNDK64)
Android SDK: C:\Program Files (x86)\Android\android-sdk
Apache Ant: C:\Program Files (x86)\Microsoft Visual Studio 14.0\Apps
Java SE jdk: C:\Program Files (x86)\Java
Git: C:\Program Files\Git

2. Adjust your enviroment variables

Add following Paths to the PATH-Enviromentvariable

[Path to CMake]\bin
[Path to Git]\bin
[Path to SDK]\tools
[Path to SDK]\platform-tools
[Path to NDK]
[Path to ANT]\bin
[Path to MinGW]\bin
[Path to MinGW]\msys\1.0\bin
[Path to Java jre]\bin
[Path to Java jdk]\bin

Make sure you use backslashes(\) and seperate the paths with semicolons (;)!

Add two new enviroment variables

Name: `ANDROID_NDK` \ Value: `[Path/to/NDK]` \ (e.g. `C:/Android/NDK` ) \ Make sure you use forwardslashes(`/`)!

Name: JAVA_HOME
Value: [PATH\to\jdk]
(e.g. C:\Program Files (x86)\Java\jdk1.7.0_55 )
Make sure you use backslashes(\)!

3. Compiling SFML

Clone the SFML Repository from Github.

Enter following comands in a cmd window:

git clone https://github.com/SFML/SFML.git SFML

If you already downloaded SFML before you can just use the existing one.

Create some folders for the build-files

cd SFML
mkdir build && cd build
mkdir armeabi-v7a && cd armeabi-v7a

Generate MSYS Makefiles for armeabi-v7a with cmake

cmake -DANDROID_ABI=armeabi-v7a -DCMAKE_TOOLCHAIN_FILE=../../cmake/toolchains/android.toolchain.cmake ../.. -G "MSYS Makefiles"

You can exchange armeabi-v7a with other architectures as you like.

Compile SFML from the generated makefiles and install it to `$(NDK)/sources` folder.

For this action you probably need administrator privileges. (Run cmd.exe as admin)

make && make install

You can use make install for multiple architectures. It all uses one sfml tag in the $(NDK)/sources folder.

4. Build the SFML Android Sample

You can find the Android Sample in [SFML_ROOT]\examples\android
You can copy it to leave the SFML repository in it’s original state. Open cmd.exe in the sample location.
To get a list of all available Android build targets:

android list target

Run Update Project for the Sample:

android update project --path [Path/to/Android/Sample] --target [targetID]

e.g.

android update project --path "" --target android-19

For path we can use "" because we are running cmd in the sample path already.

To compile use this command:

ndk-build

Create the debug (or release) apk:

ant debug
ant release

Or use this command to directly install it on a device:

ant debug install