Unable to build GStreamer for Android Tutorials

Question

I'm running into a number of issues attempting to build the GStreamer Android tutorials.

My environment is:

• Mac OS X 7
• Android SDK version 17
• Android NDK 8d

I am able to build and run the NDK samples both in Eclipse and from the command line.

I have downloaded http://cdn.gstreamer.com/android/arm/gstreamer-sdk-android-arm-debug-2012.11.tar.bz2 and added the GSTREAMER_SDK_ROOT_ANDROID environment variable to my .bash_profile.

When I try to build android-tutorial-1 via Eclipse I get the following error:

12:12:05 **** Incremental Build of configuration Default for project Tutorial1 ****
/apps/tools/android-ndk-r8d/ndk-build all 
jni/Android.mk:13: *** GSTREAMER_SDK_ROOT_ANDROID is not defined!.  Stop.

12:12:05 Build Finished (took 104ms)

I have tried adding GSTREAMER_SDK_ROOT_ANDROID to the C++ build variables in Eclispe but it makes no difference.

When I try to build via the command line I get the following error:

/bin/sh: pkg-config: command not found
/bin/sh: pkg-config: command not found
/bin/sh: pkg-config: command not found
GStreamer      : [GEN] => gst-build/gstreamer_android.c
GStreamer      : [COMPILE] => gst-build/gstreamer_android.c
gst-build/gstreamer_android.c:2:21: fatal error: gst/gst.h: No such file or directory
compilation terminated.
make: *** [gst-build/gstreamer_android.o] Error 1

What I can't figure out is gst/gst.h can not be resolved?

Answer 1

Here you faced with two problem

1. GSTREAMER_SDK_ROOT_ANDROID is not defined

Can be easily solved by set GSTREAMER_SDK_ROOT_ANDROID environment variable (in eclipse or Android.mk file) in my case I have specified this variable like this

GSTREAMER_VERSION   := 1.4.1
GSTREAMER_SDK_ROOT  := /Volumes/Data/Developers/Library/gstreamer-1.0-sdk-android/$(TARGET_ARCH_ABI)-$(APP_OPTIM)-$(GSTREAMER_VERSION)

1. TARGET_ARCH_ABI - predefined variable (in my case armeabi-v7a)
2. APP_OPTIM - predefined variable release or debug

In your case GSTREAMER_SDK_ROOT will be different of course but using predefined vars help a lot if you need support multiple archs

2. your pkg-confing is not in PATH

As you may see by default there is using sh shell

/bin/sh: pkg-config: command not found
/bin/sh: pkg-config: command not found
/bin/sh: pkg-config: command not found

It can't find pkg-config because initially PATH=/usr/bin:/bin:/usr/sbin:/sbin. In case when you installed pkg-config by brew on OSX it has been placed to /usr/local/bin

bash-3.2$ which pkg-config
/usr/local/bin/pkg-config

To fix PATH you can specify own shell

SHELL := PATH=/usr/bin:/bin:/usr/sbin:/sbin:/usr/local/bin /bin/bash

This is not perfect solution but it works

Update for Gradle users

Since 2.2.0-alpha3 gradle android plugin support external build systems like this (add it in build.gradle inside android definition)

android { 
    ...
    externalNativeBuild {
        ndkBuild {
            path "${projectDir.absolutePath}/src/main/jni/Android.mk"
        }
    }
}

Don't forget cleanup jni.srcDirs because bad plugin will start first, to cleanup jni.srcDirs at runtime add

android { 
    ...
    task disableDefaultNdkBuild << {
        android.sourceSets.main.jni.srcDirs = []
        android.sourceSets.main.jniLibs.srcDir 'src/main/libs'
    }

    preBuild.dependsOn disableDefaultNdkBuild
}

Official guide now available https://gstreamer.freedesktop.org/documentation/tutorials/android/link-against-gstreamer.html

Answer 2

I posted the above question on the GStreamer Android mailing list and got the following response:

Hi, Unfortunately we forgot to include pkg-config in this release for Mac OS X. You can download it from here: http://macpkg.sourceforge.net/

I used homebrew to install pkg-config and was able to build all of the Android Tutorials via the command line using ndk-build.

I still have a number of issues in Eclipse:

1. * GSTREAMER_SDK_ROOT_ANDROID is not defined! - I can not get Eclipse to pick up this variable
2. If I hard code the variable into the make file I then get /bin/sh: pkg-config: command not found - pkg-config is installed and working via the CLI

I believe some of the issues are related to Android Issue 33788 and I have attempted to resolve them using CDT 8.0.2 instead of CDT 8.10 but it did not solve either of the above issues.

I have worked around the problem for now by doing the following:

1. Disabled CDT building for my project
2. Building the NDK code using the CLI ndk-build
3. Building and deploying the application to my device via Eclipse as normal

Answer 3

for error1: jni/Android.mk:13: * GSTREAMER_SDK_ROOT_ANDROID is not defined!. Stop.

you can defind GSTREAMER_SDK_ROOT_ANDROID := XXXXX(your Gstreamer_Android_SDK Path) in your Android.mk files!

for error2: fatal error: gst/gst.h: No such file or directory

you can include the (Gstreamer_Android_SDK Path)/include/gstreamer0.10/ in the C/C++ General -> Paths and Symbols -> inlude!

Hope that would help:)