Merge pull request #1055 from chriswailes/ndk-update-announcement

Announce an impending update the Android NDK target

posts/2023-01-09-android-ndk-update-r25.md

@@ -0,0 +1,28 @@
+---
+layout: post
+title: "Updating the Android NDK in Rust 1.68"
+author: Android Platform Team
+description: "Modernizing Android support in Rust"
+---
+
+We are pleased to announce that Android platform support in Rust will be
+modernized in Rust 1.68 as we update the target NDK from r17 to r25.  As a
+consequence the minimum supported API level will increase from 15 (Ice Cream
+Sandwich) to 19 (KitKat).
+
+In NDK r23 Android switched to using LLVM's `libunwind` for all architectures.
+This meant that
+1. If a project were to target NDK r23 or newer with previous versions of Rust
+   [a workaround](https://github.com/rust-lang/rust/pull/85806#issuecomment-1096266946)
+   would be required to redirect attempts to link against `libgcc` to instead
+   link against `libunwind`.  Following this update this workaround will no
+   longer be necessary.
+2. If a project uses NDK r22 or older it will need to be updated to use [r23 or
+   newer](https://developer.android.com/ndk/downloads).  Information about the
+   layout of the NDK's toolchain can be found
+   [here](https://developer.android.com/ndk/guides/other_build_systems).
+
+Going forward the Android platform will target the most recent LTS NDK, allowing
+Rust developers to access platform features sooner.  These updates should occur
+yearly and will be announced in release notes.
+