STLport and Android NDK - STLport loaded as static, Linux/gcc ld reports “multiple definitions”

Question

I've looked thru a lot of material on Android NDK and STLport. I have complex app, java+native code, which loads STLport (a c++ standard library port). The original codebase had "APP_STL := stlport_static" in the Application.mk in the project's "jni" subdir. Causes ld to load the lib static. This caused many compile failures, in current SDK/NDK.

Tried to load as a dynamic lib, as per a suggestion. (In "../jni/Application.mk", set "APP_STL := stlport_shared") With this, I get a clean compile, and load, and the app runs flawlessly on the Android armeabi-v7a emulator, if I disable checkJNI on the "dalvik" virtual machine.

But once I enable checkJNI, I get an "unsatisfiedLinkError" on the libapplication.so, which looks like it might result from STLport being dynamically loaded. So, I want to load STLport in static mode (logcat reports this after several other libs successfully loaded). During the build, compile is ok, but I am getting two multiple definition errors, specifically: "multiple definition of 'vtable for std::bad_exception' " and of 'std::exception::~exception()'. (I have also tried using "gnustl_static").

I am using gcc version 4.3.0 and make version 3.81, command line mode, and small wrapper around build-ndk, for android ndk-r9c, with a build target version of android-8, "ant" to build the .apk file, and so on.

Someone who has more familiarity with Android than me (I am a complete noob) might have seen this before. If so, please advise. Thanx. - Rus

Answer 1

It's definitely possible to use stlport_static with NDK r9c. What object files are mentioned with multiple definition errors? Maybe, you are using some prebuilt libraries? Maybe, the gcc version 4.3 is problematic? Why don't you use the default (gcc 4.8)?

With that, the NDK document explicitly encourages use of shared STL, but you must not forget to call System.loadLibrary() in correct order:

System.loadLibrary("stlport_shared");
System.loadLibrary("Rusfuture");