arm v9.3

[Ealireza]

Why doesn’t the Android NDK provide a separate ABI for Arm v9.3? That would let us target and leverage the new features in v9.3. Is it possible to build specifically for this architecture? It’s a bit odd that there isn’t an option.

[DanAlbert]

Depends what you mean. Clang will happily let you compile for arm v9.3. You can use https://clang.llvm.org/docs/AttributeReference.html#target and https://clang.llvm.org/docs/AttributeReference.html#target-clones to simplify this.

If you're asking why there isn't a separate APP_ABI option for it, with those libraries going into a separate folder in the APK (or app bundle) so that you can bundle both armv8 and armv9 libraries with your app, and package manager is responsible for installing the most appropriate libraries for the device, then the only real answer I can give you is "because we haven't done that yet". I can't tell you why, because that's not actually the NDK's decision. All we do is present the interface defined by the OS. The OS doesn't currently define arm v9.3 as a separate ABI, so neither do we.

I'm curious though, why specifically 9.3? There are hardly any devices out there with that hardware right now, if any at all (I'm genuinely not sure, app development IME is much more about the old hardware than about the new hardware). I'm not sure what the benefit to users or developers would be at this point.