How to create an Air Native Extensions for Linux ?

[pol2095]

Hello,

adt has a new target ane -platform "Linux-x86-64" since Air 33.1.1.533, but how to create an Air Native Extensions for Linux (Ubuntu for example) ?

I tried to create a static library *.a in C like iOS (and a shared library *.so too)

...
void TestContextInitializer(void* extData, const uint8_t* ctxType, FREContext ctx, uint32_t* numFunctionsToTest, const FRENamedFunction** functionsToSet) {
    
    *numFunctionsToTest = 1;
    
    FRENamedFunction* func = (FRENamedFunction*) malloc(sizeof(FRENamedFunction) * *numFunctionsToTest);
    
    func[0].name = (const uint8_t*) "initTest";
    func[0].functionData = NULL;
    func[0].function = &initTest;
    
    *functionsToSet = func;
}
...

gcc -Wall -c test.c
ar crs libtest.a test.o

but it doesn't work ?
error #3500: The extension context does not have a method named "initTest"

Thanks

[pol2095]

Any help ?
is-it possible to create an Air Native Extensions on Linux <platform name="Linux-x86-64"> ?
The library must be a static library (.a) or a shared library (.so) or other ? in C or C++ ?
Thanks

[ajwfrost]

Hi

It should be a dynamic/shared library, .so file. If you're using C++ then the only thing to watch out for is the name decoration, so e.g. declare any exported functions as extern "C", and you'll need to ensure the init/destroy functions mentioned in the extension XML configuration are visible, so precede them with __attribute__((visibility("default")))

For example:

#ifdef WIN32
#define DLLEXPORT __declspec( dllexport )
#define NULL	0
#else
#define DLLEXPORT  __attribute__((visibility("default")))
#endif

DLLEXPORT void InitExtension(
        void**                 extDataToSet       ,
        FREContextInitializer* ctxInitializerToSet,
        FREContextFinalizer*   ctxFinalizerToSet)
{
	*extDataToSet = NULL;
	*ctxInitializerToSet = ContextInitializer;
	*ctxFinalizerToSet   = ContextFinalizer;
}

DLLEXPORT void DestroyExtension(void* extData)
{
	// not actually guaranteed to be called at all..
}

Looking at one of our demos, we had the build commands of:

gcc -fPIC -o EdgeDetect.o -c EdgeDetect.c
gcc -shared -fPIC -o EdgeDetect.so EdgeDetect.o -lc -L. -lFlashRuntimeExtensions

I believe the -L. there should probably be -L/path/to/sdk/lib so that it picks up the stub library from the AIR SDK, but we had copied that into the local folder for convenience...

Also just looking at your code: we don't clean up any memory so you may want to free the structure that you malloced, within the context finalizer. Or if you know all the details at compile-time then you can use static/global memory for them, e.g.

	static FRENamedFunction arrFunctions[] = {
		{ (uint8_t*)"detectEdges", NULL, detectEdges },
		  (uint8_t*)"get_strlen" , NULL, get_strlen  }
	};
	*functionsToSet = arrFunctions;
	*numFunctionsToSet = 2;

[GeneralVimes]

Thank you very much! I've got long-time requests by Linux users to play my games, now I can give such an opportunity for Linux x86_64

[GeneralVimes]

adt -package [signing options] -target bundle OutputFolderName app-descriptor.xml swf-file other-files-etc

Sorry, but this command created a folder with .exe inside. Was there any other key for calling .adt needed?
Or to create a build for Linus the building process itself must be run on Linux?

[ajwfrost]

Yes, sorry, to create a Linux app, you need to be running it on a Linux machine... the "bundle" and "native" target types always just generate something based on whatever machine you're running on.

[GeneralVimes]

@ajwfrost I've installed Ubuntu 20 and now trying to find out how to build an Linux build with an .swf file, which I compiled on my Windows machine. Could you, please, share the minimal project setup? This can be a start for the AIR knowledgebase, about which we were talking these days.

[GeneralVimes]

Looks like I managed to make something, I'll create a tutorial based on this thread: https://forum.starling-framework.org/d/23144-how-to-build-air-game-for-linux

[pol2095]

I tried but I have this error to compile a captive runtime :
Packaging failed. Packager internal error

[pol2095]

the same code work on Windows, I don't understand...

gcc -fPIC -o EdgeDetect.o -c EdgeDetect.c why is not gcc -fPIC -o EdgeDetect.o -c EdgeDetect.cpp ?

for gcc -shared -fPIC -o EdgeDetect.so EdgeDetect.o -lc -L. -lFlashRuntimeExtensions I need to remane "FlashRuntimeExtensions.so" to "libFlashRuntimeExtensions.so" in lib director

the ane need a platform.xml ?

[ajwfrost]

Our sample was just C hence gcc EdgeDetect.c rather than g++ EdgeDetect.cpp

Yes I'd wondered about that 'lib' prefix, the guidelines were written for a custom Linux version which perhaps allowed that. But if it makes more sense for us to ship it as libFlashRuntimeExtensions.so, we can change that...

You shouldn't need a platform.xml unless you want to include other dependencies in there i.e. if your ANE is split into multiple .so files.

I just got some feedback from the team here: there does appear to be a problem within the bundle packaging of an application where it has native libraries included - they're investigating so hopefully will have an update (not sure whether this is a change just in ADT, it may be a new runtime file that's required though...)

So -- please stand by and I'll get some information about this uploaded once they have found the root cause.

thanks

[ajwfrost]

FYI, there were a couple of issues left over from Adobe's earlier implementation/restrictions around ANEs that needed to be worked around. But we should be able to provide a patched version of the runtime library (libCore.so) hopefully by the end of today.

thanks

[pol2095]

Thanks, I will wait an update.

[ajwfrost]

Hi @pol2095
Are you able to take the updated libCore.so runtime file from the below link and put this into your SDK? then retry.. if you're still having problems, I'll try to get our tutorial doc updated into a suitable state for public viewing!
https://transfer.harman.com/message/bf46gz58g91HoX3moDI82g
thanks

[pol2095]

Great job, adl and adt work now, thanks.
Any news about Ubuntu 20 ?

[ajwfrost]

Yes - for Ubuntu 20 we need to provide a build of curl and to have the runtime know to look for this in the appropriate folder first. Should be able to provide an update for this although with a few other fixes that have gone in to the Linux build just now (crashes when using Worker objects) I'm wondering about creating another release just for the Linux build of the AIR SDK.... we may do a few more bits of real-world testing with applications that folk are sending in...

So maybe later in August we'll get an update out to fix this and the other issues mentioned in #94

thanks

[ajwfrost]

Hi @pol2095 just as an interim patch .. try unzipping the below file over the top of the 33.1.1.575 AIR SDK, it should help with getting it to run on Ubuntu 20!

thanks
AIRSDK_Linux_33.1.1.575_updates.zip

[pol2095]

Great, adl return Gtk-Message: 22:59:37.582: Failed to load module "canberra-gtk-module" but it work on Ubuntu 20.
Any news about contentsScaleFactor ?

[pol2095]

The Captive Runtime created on Ubuntu 20 doesn't work on Ubuntu 16.
Running 32-bit AIR 32.0 on 64-bit systems are not been fully tested. However, 32-bit AIR is expected to run on 64-bit systems if they have the required 32-bit libraries and packages installed.

and adl return :
loadRuntime: /home/ubuntu/Desktop/AIR_SDK/bin/../runtimes/air/linux/Adobe AIR/Versions/1.0/libCore.so Error loading the runtime (libssl.so.1.1: cannot open shared object file: No such file or directory)

[pol2095]

On Fedora 34, I have this error :
error while loading shared libraries: libgtk-x11-2.0.so.0: cannot open shared object file: No such file or directory

I need to install :
sudo yum install gtk2-devel