Can't build NSS for Android on Mac post NDK upgrade to 25

[tarikeshaq]

After the NDK upgrade, the libs/verify-android-environment script fails for mac users. We've established there is a problem with the build script attempting to run the system assembler and passing in a --64 option, which the mac assembler doesn't support.

In the mean time, a few notes:

• This does not affect anyone with an already existing build of NSS (i.e you've run verify-android-environment before the upgrade) and still have a working libs/android directory
• If this affects you, one remedy is to:
  • Rever Android NDK 25 [firefox-android: main] #5442 locally
  • Install NDK 21.3.6528147 in Android Studio (or verify it's already installed)
  • delete libs/android
  • run libs/verify-android-environment.sh
  • Remove any changes you have because you reverted Android NDK 25 [firefox-android: main] #5442
  • Now android builds should work, but will break again if you delete libs/android

┆Issue is synchronized with this Jira Task
┆Sprint End Date: 2023-05-04

[mhammond]

So the new NDK is causing the assember to be executed via:

"/usr/bin/as" --64 ...

whereas the earlier NDK is executing:

"/Users/skip/Library/Android/sdk/ndk/21.3.6528147/toolchains/llvm/prebuilt/darwin-x86_64/bin/../lib/gcc/x86_64-linux-android/4.9.x/../../../../x86_64-linux-android/bin/as" --noexecstack --64

any they are quite different assembers:

% /Users/skip/Library/Android/sdk/ndk/21.3.6528147/toolchains/llvm/prebuilt/darwin-x86_64/bin/../lib/gcc/x86_64-linux-android/4.9.x/../../../../x86_64-linux-android/bin/as --version
GNU assembler (GNU Binutils) 2.27.0.20170315
Copyright (C) 2016 Free Software Foundation, Inc.
This program is free software; you may redistribute it under the terms of
the GNU General Public License version 3 or later.
This program has absolutely no warranty.
This assembler was configured for a target of `x86_64-linux-android'.

% /usr/bin/as --version
Apple clang version 14.0.3 (clang-1403.0.22.14.1)
Target: x86_64-apple-darwin22.4.0
Thread model: posix
InstalledDir: /Applications/Xcode.app/Contents/Developer/Toolchains/XcodeDefault.xctoolchain/usr/bin

apparently the new ndk doesn't come with any GCC tools - there's no as installed. According to this -fno-integrated-as should help, but didn't for me. However, the failing compilation is passing -no-integrated-as - and removing that seems to help, even though it seems the opposite of what should happen.

So I'm still confused but mildly less confused than I was :)

[mhammond]

The gyp scripts also have a force_integrated_as variable, but no idea how that helps as yet