Changelog

We've moved our bug tracker to GitHub: https://github.com/android-ndk/ndk/issues

Clang

• PSA: Everyone should be switching to Clang.
• Clang has been updated to 3.8svn (r243773, build 2481030).
  • Note that this is now a nearly pure upstream clang.
  • Also note that Clang packaged in the Windows 64 NDK is actually 32-bit.
• Support for emulated TLS.
  • __thread is now supported by the compiler by emulating ELF TLS with pthread thread-specific data.
  • C++11 thread_local will work in some cases, but will not work for data with non-trivial destructors except when running on Marshmallow (android-23) or newer because those cases require support from libc.
  • Does not yet work with Aarch64 when TLS variables are accessed from a shared library.

GCC

• GCC in the NDK is now deprecated.
  • Time to start using Clang if you haven’t already. If you have problems with Clang, please file bugs!
  • The NDK will not be upgrading to 5.x, nor will we be accepting non-critical backports.
  • Maintenance for miscompiles and internal compiler errors in 4.9 will be handled on a case by case basis.
• GCC 4.8 has been removed. All targets now use GCC 4.9.
• Synchronized with google/gcc-4_9 to r224707 (from r214835).

NDK

• The samples are no longer included in the NDK. They are instead available on GitHub.
• The documentation is no longer included in the NDK. It is instead available on the Android Developer website.
• Make ARM standalone toolchains default to arm7.
  • The old behavior can be restored by passing -target armv5te-linux-androideabi.
• Use -isystem for platform includes.
  • Warnings caused by bionic will no longer break app builds.
• Fixed segfault when throwing exceptions via gabi++ (see http://b.android.com/179410).
• Change libc++’s inline namespace to std::__ndk1 to prevent ODR issues with platform libc++.
• Support for mips64r2 has been partially dropped. The rest will be dropped in the future.
• All libc++ libraries are now built with libc++abi.
• Bump default APP_PLATFORM to Gingerbread.
  • Expect support for Froyo and older to be dropped in a future release.
• Updated gabi++ _Unwind_Exception struct for 64 bits.
• cpufeatures: Detect SSE4.1 and SSE4.2 as well.
• cpufeatures: Detect cpu features on x86_64 as well.
• Update libc++abi to upstream r231075.
• Added native tracing API to android-23.
• Added native multinetwork API to android-23.
• byteswap.h, endian.h, sys/procfs.h, sys/ucontext.h, sys/user.h, and uchar.h have all been updated from ToT Bionic.
• sys/cdefs.h has been synchronized across all API levels.
• Support for _WCHAR_IS_8BIT has been removed.
• Fixed fegetenv and fesetenv for arm
• Fix end pointer size/alignment of crtend_* for mips64 and x86_64
• Removed sed.
• Removed mclinker.
• Removed Perl.

Binutils

• Unified binutils source between Android and ChromiumOS.
• For full details see https://android-review.googlesource.com/#/c/182865/.
• Gold for aarch64 should now be much more reliable. Use -fuse-ld=gold at link time to use gold instead of bfd. The default will likely switch in the next release.
• Good linking time improvement for huge binaries for Gold ARM backend (up to 50% linking time reduction for debuggable Chrome Browser).
• New option: --pic-veneer.
• The 32-bit Windows package no longer contains ld.gold. It is available in the 64-bit package.
  • Current gold no longer builds when targeting 32-bit Windows (causes internal compiler failures in mingw).

GDB

• gdb has been updated to version 7.10.
• ndk-gdb has been removed in favor of ndk-gdb.py.
• ndk-gdb.py has been significantly rewritten.
  • Performance should be somewhat better.
  • Error messages have been significantly improved.
  • Relative project paths should always work now.
  • Ctrl-C no longer kills the backgrounded gdbserver.
  • Improve Windows support.

Yasm

• Yasm has been updated to version 1.3.0.

Known Issues

• This is not intended to be a comprehensive list of all outstanding bugs.
• x86 ASAN does not currently work. See discussion on https://android-review.googlesource.com/#/c/186276/
• The combination of Clang, x86, stlport_static, and optimization levels higher than -O0 causes test failures with dynamic_cast. See https://android-review.googlesource.com/#/c/185920
• Exception handling will often fail when using c++_shared on ARM32. The root cause is incompatibility between the LLVM unwinder used by libc++abi for ARM32 and libgcc. This is not a regression from r10e.

What's Next?

A significant proportion of the changes that went into this release were organizational changes to the build and to the package layout. The reason for this is that we will soon be integrating the NDK into the Android SDK manager as several distinct components. The motivations for this change are:

• No wasted bandwidth or disk space on unneeded pieces. Do you really need 14 compilers? With the modular NDK you can download just the one Clang, or a single set of GCCs.
• Easier updating. Just launch the SDK manager and install the updates rather than downloading an entire new NDK.
• Quicker updates. In the future we’ll be able to release just a portion of the NDK on a quicker schedule. No more waiting for the next big release for a handful of bug fixes or a compiler update.

The integration with the SDK manager should happen Soon™.