Cross‑Platform Development with CodeTyphon: Building Android and iOS Libraries

Many developers want to reuse a single code base on multiple platforms, keeping UI and system‑specific parts separate while sharing business logic, encryption, compression, and utility modules; this article explores how to achieve that with CodeTyphon.

CodeTyphon is a powerful, near‑universal cross‑platform development tool, and a related course is available on CC Talk (http://www.cctalk.com/course/161021604561/).

Using CodeTyphon to compile Android .so files is straightforward: install the tool, download the required libraries and toolchain, then compile the crosselements for arm‑android , mipsel‑android and i386‑android . Building for iOS is more involved because a Mac is required and CodeTyphon’s Mac support is limited.

On macOS, first obtain CodeTyphon (version 3.1.1) which contains the needed Free Pascal Compiler (FPC). The FPC source is also required to build an iOS‑capable cross‑compiler.

Define environment variables for the compiler and output paths. Example settings:

export FPC=/usr/local/codetyphon/fpc/fpc64/bin/x86_64-linux/fpc   # Linux

export FPC=/usr/local/codetyphon/fpc/fpc32/bin/i386-darwin/ppc386   # macOS (32‑bit for iOS)

export OUT=/usr/local/lib/fpc/3.1.1

export IOS_PLATFORM=/Applications/Xcode.app/Contents/Developer/Platforms

export TYPHON=/usr/local/codetyphon

Full build steps (run in order):

svn checkout http://svn.freepascal.org/svn/fpc/trunk/Developer/FPC/3.1.1

cd /Developer/FPC/3.1.1

sudo make distclean

sudo make FPC=${FPC} OPT="-ap" distclean all

sudo make FPC=/Developer/FPC/3.1.1/compiler/ppc386 install

sudo make distclean

sudo make FPC=${FPC} CPU_TARGET="x86_64" OPT="-ap" distclean all

sudo make crossinstall CPU_TARGET=x86_64

sudo mv ${OUT}/ppcrossx64 ${OUT}/ppcx64

export IOS_BASE=${IOS_PLATFORM}/iPhoneOS.platform/Developer/SDKs/iPhoneOS.sdk

export BIN_BASE=${IOS_BASE}/usr/bin

sudo make FPC=${FPC} OPT="-ap" CPU_TARGET=aarch64 CROSSOPT="-FD${BIN_BASE} -XR${IOS_BASE}" all

sudo make FPC=/Developer/FPC/3.1.1/compiler/ppcrossarm OPT="-ap" CPU_TARGET=aarch64 CROSSOPT="-FD${BIN_BASE} -XR${IOS_BASE}" install CROSSINSTALL=1

After these steps the real‑device iOS toolchain is ready. To build a simulator version (x86_64) add:

export IOS_BASE=${IOS_PLATFORM}/iPhoneSimulator.platform/Developer/SDKs/iPhoneSimulator.sdk

export BIN_BASE=${IOS_BASE}/usr/bin

sudo make FPC=${FPC} OPT="-ap" CPU_TARGET=x86_64 OS_TARGET=iphonesim CROSSOPT="-FD${BIN_BASE} -XR${IOS_BASE}" all

sudo make crossinstall CPU_TARGET=x86_64 OS_TARGET=iphonesim

Example Pascal library ( libdemo ) that exports a simple hello function and a JNI wrapper:

library libdemo;

{$mode objfpc}{$H+}

uses cthreads, ctypes, math, classes, sysutils, jni2, jni_utils;

function hello(name: PChar): PChar; cdecl;

var ret: string;

begin

ret := Format('Hello%s', [string(name)]);

Result := strAlloc(Length(ret));

strcopy(Result, PChar(ret));

end;

function Java_com_sample_NativeLib_hello(env: PJNIEnv; obj: jobject; name: jstring): jstring; stdcall;

var namestr: string; ret: PChar;

begin

namestr := jstringToString(env, name);

ret := hello(PChar(namestr));

Result := stringToJstring(env, string(ret));

end;

exports hello, Java_com_sample_NativeLib_hello;

begin

SetExceptionMask([exInvalidOp, exDenormalized, exZeroDivide, exOverflow, exUnderflow, exPrecision]);

end.

Compile the library for Linux or macOS with:

fpc -Scghi demo.pas

For Android, add the target and architecture flags, e.g.:

fpc -Tandroid -Parm -Scghi -Fl${TYPHON}/bin/Libraries/android-4.4-api19-arm demo.pas

To produce an iOS static library (required because iOS rejects dynamic libraries), compile to object files and archive:

${OUT}/ppcrossa64 -Tdarwin -Cn demo.pas

ar -q libdemo.a `grep "\.o$" link.res`

ranlib libdemo.a

For the iOS simulator use the 64‑bit cross‑compiler:

${OUT}/ppcx64 -Tiphonesim -Cn demo.pas

Verify that the hello symbol is present:

nm libdemo.a | grep hello

Finally, link libdemo.a into an Xcode iOS project and add the appropriate header to call the function from Objective‑C or Swift.