Filament Android Development, Deployment, and Benchmarking

This skill details the procedures for compiling binaries for Android, installing them onto a physical device or emulator, and running tests and benchmarks.

1. Compiling Release Build for Android

Android binaries should almost always be built in release mode for testing and benchmarking. To build the release version targeting the arm64-v8a architecture, and optionally enable Perfetto tracing (the -P flag, which is highly recommended during performance development):

./build.sh -q arm64-v8a -Pip android release

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2. Deploying Binaries to an Android Device

Push the compiled executable (test or benchmark) to a writable temporary directory (such as /data/local/tmp) on the connected Android device using adb:

adb push ./out/cmake-android-release-aarch64/{path-to-executable} /data/local/tmp

Replace {path-to-executable} with the actual relative path to your compiled binary under out/cmake-android-release-aarch64/.

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3. Executing Binaries on an Android Device

Run the pushed binary inside the Android device's shell. You must set LD_LIBRARY_PATH to the directory containing the pushed binary so that the dynamic linker can locate target proprietary shared libraries:

adb shell LD_LIBRARY_PATH=/data/local/tmp /data/local/tmp/{executable}

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4. Running a Performance Benchmark on Device

When running performance benchmarks on Android devices, always conform to the following formatting rules:

1. Output counters as a table (--benchmark_counters_tabular)
2. Keep colors enabled (--benchmark_color=true)
3. Set an appropriate, readable time unit matching the performance characteristics of the measured workload (typically ms or us, rarely ns):

adb shell LD_LIBRARY_PATH=/data/local/tmp /data/local/tmp/{executable} --benchmark_counters_tabular --benchmark_color=true --benchmark_time_unit=ms