I create all NDK libs for my Android apps with Android Studio for now.
Now i will try creating the libs with Island.
I created a test project with the “Static Library (Android NDK)” template and changed the executable type to “Library”.
After compiling in release mode (empty project, only base class from template) the resulting library file is more than 3 MB in size.
My largest Android Studio lib with hundreds of functions and a complete Lua interpreter inside has only 550 KB.
Probably depends on what other libraries you link in. It might also matter for how many separate architectures you build your library. That said, Island does link in some base stuff that a plain C library would not, such as Island RTL (to give you nice things such as Objects), and the GC.
I created the project from the template, therefore it contains references to Island, gc and rtl. And it seems the project doesn’t compile without this three lib’s.
Sad. If smaller lib’s not possible Island isn’t useful for most NDK programming imho.