The C library. Stuff like fopen(3) and kill(2).

The math library. Traditionally Unix systems kept stuff like sin(3) and cos(3) in a separate library to save space in the days before shared libraries.

The dynamic linker interface library. This is actually just a bunch of stubs that the dynamic linker replaces with pointers to its own implementation at runtime. This is where stuff like dlopen(3) lives.

The C++ ABI support functions. The C++ compiler doesn't know how to implement thread-safe static initialization and the like, so it just calls functions that are supplied by the system. Stuff like __cxa_guard_acquire and __cxa_pure_virtual live here.

The dynamic linker. When you run a dynamically-linked executable, its ELF file has a DT_INTERP entry that says "use the following program to start me". On Android, that's either linker or linker64 (depending on whether it's a 32-bit or 64-bit executable). It's responsible for loading the ELF executable into memory and resolving references to symbols (so that when your code tries to jump to fopen(3), say, it lands in the right place).

The tests/ directory contains unit tests. Roughly arranged as one file per publicly-exported header file.

The benchmarks/ directory contains benchmarks.

libc/
  arch-arm/
  arch-arm64/
  arch-common/
  arch-mips/
  arch-mips64/
  arch-x86/
  arch-x86_64/
    # Each architecture has its own subdirectory for stuff that isn't shared
    # because it's architecture-specific. There will be a .mk file in here that
    # drags in all the architecture-specific files.
    bionic/
      # Every architecture needs a handful of machine-specific assembler files.
      # They live here.
    include/
      machine/
        # The majority of header files are actually in libc/include/, but many
        # of them pull in a  for things like limits,
        # endianness, and how floating point numbers are represented. Those
        # headers live here.
    string/
      # Most architectures have a handful of optional assembler files
      # implementing optimized versions of various routines. The 
      # functions are particular favorites.
    syscalls/
      # The syscalls directories contain script-generated assembler files.
      # See 'Adding system calls' later.

  include/
    # The public header files on everyone's include path. These are a mixture of
    # files written by us and files taken from BSD.

  kernel/
    # The kernel uapi header files. These are scrubbed copies of the originals
    # in external/kernel-headers/. These files must not be edited directly. The
    # generate_uapi_headers.sh script should be used to go from a kernel tree to
    # external/kernel-headers/ --- this takes care of the architecture-specific
    # details. The update_all.py script should be used to regenerate bionic's
    # scrubbed headers from external/kernel-headers/.

  private/
    # These are private header files meant for use within bionic itself.

  dns/
    # Contains the DNS resolver (originates from NetBSD code).

  upstream-freebsd/
  upstream-netbsd/
  upstream-openbsd/
    # These directories contain unmolested upstream source. Any time we can
    # just use a BSD implementation of something unmodified, we should.
    # The structure under these directories mimics the upstream tree,
    # but there's also...
    android/
      include/
        # This is where we keep the hacks necessary to build BSD source
        # in our world. The *-compat.h files are automatically included
        # using -include, but we also provide equivalents for missing
        # header/source files needed by the BSD implementation.

  bionic/
    # This is the biggest mess. The C++ files are files we own, typically
    # because the Linux kernel interface is sufficiently different that we
    # can't use any of the BSD implementations. The C files are usually
    # legacy mess that needs to be sorted out, either by replacing it with
    # current upstream source in one of the upstream directories or by
    # switching the file to C++ and cleaning it up.

  malloc_debug/
    # The code that implements the functionality to enable debugging of
    # native allocation problems.

  stdio/
    # These are legacy files of dubious provenance. We're working to clean
    # this mess up, and this directory should disappear.

  tools/
    # Various tools used to maintain bionic.

  tzcode/
    # A modified superset of the IANA tzcode. Most of the modifications relate
    # to Android's use of a single file (with corresponding index) to contain
    # time zone data.
  zoneinfo/
    # Android-format time zone data.
    # See 'Updating tzdata' later.

Adding a system call usually involves:

1. Add entries to SYSCALLS.TXT. See SYSCALLS.TXT itself for documentation on the format.
2. Run the gensyscalls.py script.
3. Add constants (and perhaps types) to the appropriate header file. Note that you should check to see whether the constants are already in kernel uapi header files, in which case you just need to make sure that the appropriate POSIX header file in libc/include/ includes the relevant file or files.
4. Add function declarations to the appropriate header file.
5. Add at least basic tests. Even a test that deliberately supplies an invalid argument helps check that we're generating the right symbol and have the right declaration in the header file. (And strace(1) can confirm that the correct system call is being made.)

As mentioned above, this is currently a two-step process:

1. Use generate_uapi_headers.sh to go from a Linux source tree to appropriate contents for external/kernel-headers/.
2. Run update_all.py to scrub those headers and import them into bionic.

This is fully automated (and these days handled by the libcore team, because they own icu, and that needs to be updated in sync with bionic):

1. Run update-tzdata.py in external/icu/tools/.

If you make a change that is likely to have a wide effect on the tree (such as a libc header change), you should run make checkbuild. A regular make will not build the entire tree; just the minimum number of projects that are required for the device. Tests, additional developer tools, and various other modules will not be built. Note that make checkbuild will not be complete either, as make tests covers a few additional modules, but generally speaking make checkbuild is enough.

The tests are all built from the tests/ directory.

$ mma
$ adb remount
$ adb sync
$ adb shell /data/nativetest/bionic-unit-tests/bionic-unit-tests32
$ adb shell \
    /data/nativetest/bionic-unit-tests-static/bionic-unit-tests-static32
# Only for 64-bit targets
$ adb shell /data/nativetest64/bionic-unit-tests/bionic-unit-tests64
$ adb shell \
    /data/nativetest64/bionic-unit-tests-static/bionic-unit-tests-static64

The host tests require that you have lunched either an x86 or x86_64 target.

$ mma
$ mm bionic-unit-tests-run-on-host32
$ mm bionic-unit-tests-run-on-host64  # For 64-bit *targets* only.

As a way to check that our tests do in fact test the correct behavior (and not just the behavior we think is correct), it is possible to run the tests against the host's glibc. The executables are already in your path.

$ mma
$ bionic-unit-tests-glibc32
$ bionic-unit-tests-glibc64

For either host or target coverage, you must first:

• $ export NATIVE_COVERAGE=true
  • Note that the build system is ignorant to this flag being toggled, i.e. if you change this flag, you will have to manually rebuild bionic.
• Set bionic_coverage=true in libc/Android.mk and libm/Android.mk.

$ mma
$ adb sync
$ adb shell \
    GCOV_PREFIX=/data/local/tmp/gcov \
    GCOV_PREFIX_STRIP=`echo $ANDROID_BUILD_TOP | grep -o / | wc -l` \
    /data/nativetest/bionic-unit-tests/bionic-unit-tests32
$ acov

acov will pull all coverage information from the device, push it to the right directories, run lcov, and open the coverage report in your browser.

First, build and run the host tests as usual (see above).

$ croot
$ lcov -c -d $ANDROID_PRODUCT_OUT -o coverage.info
$ genhtml -o covreport coverage.info # or lcov --list coverage.info

The coverage report is now available at covreport/index.html.

Bionic's test runner will run each test in its own process by default to prevent tests failures from impacting other tests. This also has the added benefit of running them in parallel, so they are much faster.

However, this also makes it difficult to run the tests under GDB. To prevent each test from being forked, run the tests with the flag --no-isolate.

This probably belongs in the NDK documentation rather than here, but these are the known ABI bugs in the 32-bit ABI:

• time_t is 32-bit. https://b/5819737. In the 64-bit ABI, time_t is 64-bit.

• off_t is 32-bit. There is off64_t, and in newer releases there is almost-complete support for _FILE_OFFSET_BITS. Unfortunately our stdio implementation uses 32-bit offsets and -- worse -- function pointers to functions that use 32-bit offsets, so there's no good way to implement the last few pieces https://b/24807045. In the 64-bit ABI, off_t is off64_t.

• sigset_t is too small on ARM and x86 (but correct on MIPS), so support for real-time signals is broken. https://b/5828899 In the 64-bit ABI, sigset_t is the correct size for every architecture.