Develop Reference

Where does a native *.so library and its headers go in an android project?

I have looked at Use prebuilt JNI library in Android Studio 3.1 and How to use .so in a second project in Android?. The first is trying to get a library file without headers working and the other seems to be focusing on a specific issue with his build (although there's some useful information there). I'm relatively new to app development and especially to native development on android. I've gotten a build with the JNI library and some c++ code working, but that seems to be just for building from source.
It's probably a simple answer, but I haven't been able to find documentation on this specifically in the android developers documentation. I'm interested in understanding the correct (or most conventional) place to put and way to use a precompiled library (module/lib/*.so and module/include/*.h) in an android project. Would I even need to use JNI or the NDK if the library is built with another build tool? Another project I have has a native library source object (*.so) in ./obj/local, ./libs, and in many other folders related to JNI. I'm guessing it would be somewhere in there, but I'd like to know what is conventional.
For some context, I'm trying to work with the essentia library. I have followed the guide on compiling for Android and have a build with the general hierarchy mentioned above (essentia/lib and essentia/include) that seems to be working.

Android Studio JNI: cannot compile JPEG c-library

My program needs to read jpeg-images from a file native. For that purpose I downloaded official jpeglib c-source code and that works flawlessly on a Windows version of this program, which is programmed using Embarcadero RAD Studio 8.
But when I try to use the same source code in Android Studio JNI, I see lots of errors almost every c-source file :( Below is a screenshot:
As you can see, there's errors on both
-Macro expansions (ERREXIT, red underlines), which complain "class 'blahblah' doesn't have a field 'blahblah'".
-member methods (red text in code), which complain also "class 'blahblah' doesn't have a field 'blahblah'".
Looks like there are many C-language classes and fields, or probably all, which are not working. But the jpeglib source definitely contains them all, something is just not working in Android Studio! Probably Android Studio C-compiler is somehow limited, but there must be some way to bypass it...
This problem doesn't exist in C++ source files. I have different source folders for java and C++ source files (and there are also separate jni folder, but I don't use it, probably I should), but C source files resides inside the C++ folder. I have added all c, cpp, h and hpp source files inside the parentheses of the CMakeLists.txt's add_library() directive, but that's all. I don't know is it enough...
I'm glad to get any suggestions how to fix this.

It is not enough to add all libjpeg files to your add_library(). The library expects to be configured for the specific toolchain, see e.g. this example.
I prefer an optimized version of the library, called libjpeg-turbo. On GitHub you can find step-by-step instructions how the library can be cross-compiled for Android.

Well, there seems to be happy ending...
I have to admit that Android Studio most likely can compile JPEG c-library:) The problem "class 'blahblah' doesn't have a field 'blahblah'" was because the library needs to be configured for the specific toolchain, like #Alex Cohn said. But the configuration doesn't happen in CMakeLists.txt, instead you need to rewrite the code itself at some extent. For example, you need to change
-INT32 to int32_t
-#define boolean bool
-#define EXTERN extern
-add lots of #include <> and #include ""
-and more...
If you need to do that, start from header files: don't touch C files until you have headers error free. As a side note, I had exactly the same build order in Android Studio than I had in Embarcadero Studio, but that didn't helped to succeed... I don't know yet, will this modified library work, but at least I think I will get rid of compilation errors!

How does one disable C/C++ support for a project in Android Studio?

Every now and again, I make the mistake of trying to enable C/C++ support in an Android Studio project. I think that I might like to use C/C++, but I forget that, at least on my system, I've never once been able to get it to work, even after downloading the NDK library.
I've looked around for how to remove C/C++ support from a project, but it seems the only things you can find are questions (and answers) on how to enable/disable NDK support, rather than how to remove the support from a project.
So, how does one do that?

Removing the externalNativeBuild blocks within the build.gradle app file should do the trick. Also look for any System.loadLibrary("native-lib"); calls within your java code and remove their relative static block.
A more intensive cleanup would be to additionally delete the CMakeLists.txt and any C/C++ code from the project.

Android Studio C++ NDK library example

I would like to download some working example of Android Studio NDK project with C or C++ which will be compiled to .so library (or APK from which I can extract .so).
I have tried ndkbuild with Android.mk build and also CMake with CMakeLists.txt, official and unofficial tutorials on Windows...
If I try them on android from same app (java), it is working but I want to use NDK in Unity3D on android and I keep getting DllNotFoundException.
I uploaded my Android and Unity projects to github.

First of all, here is a sample Android Project plugin you are looking for.
It's very important to know how to do this yourself.
This used to be hard to do before but the latest Android Studio made it easier to now use C/C++ or generate .so library easily. Update Android Studio to the latest version then follow steps below to create a C++ plugin.
1.Create a new Project in Android Studio
2.Check the Include C++ suport to enable C++.
3.On the Dropdown Menu, check C++ 11 on the C++ Standard drop-down menu. You will need C++ 11 to actually use most useful C++ features. Also, enable exception or frtti if you need them.
That's really it.
When you build the plugin:
The debug library is should be at:
\app\build\intermediates\cmake\debug\obj\
The release library is should be at:
\app\build\intermediates\cmake\debug\obj\
If you only see the debug but not the release version of the plugin, check here for how to make it appear.
Possible reasons you are getting DllNotFoundException on Android:
1.You did not wrap the C/C++ function around extern "C". You must do this for each function in the .cpp file or you do it in the function in the .h file.
2.You put the plugin in the wrong Unity folder.
The armeabi-v7a and x86 plugins generated at <ProjectDirectory>\app\build\intermediates\cmake\release\obj should be placed at Assets\Plugins\Android\libs\armeabi-v7a\ and Assets\Plugins\Android\libs\x86\ in the Unity project.
Make sure to spell these correctly. See this for more information about this.
3.You are loading it incorrectly from the C# side.
Let's say that the name of the plugin is libScreenshot.a, do not include the lib prefix, also do not add the .a when loading it.
[DllImport("Screenshot", CallingConvention = CallingConvention.Cdecl)]
public static extern void takeScreenshot();

Android NDK future extended support for C++

Is there any info about the future of extending the safe C++ header list in the NDK (or maybe some hints to what might be safe to use) ? Or how soon we can expect the next NDK update? Also will there be any tutorials and documentation comming out for the NDK?
Thanks

If you are interested in using C++ with the Android NDK you should check out the modified NDK by CrystaX. He has rebuilt the Android NDK so that it has full support for C++, including C++ Exceptions, RTTI (Run Time Type Identification) and the Standard C++ Library.
There aren't that many changes, in fact CrystaX offers a link to the complete patch file from his website.
Check it out at http://www.crystax.net/android/ndk-r4.php

i'm not aware of any announcements regarding future plans.
the samples are here:
http://developer.android.com/sdk/ndk/1.6_r1/index.html#samples
and the NDK itself contains documentation in the form of .txt files in the docs/ directory.