While playing this puzzle (It's a Java keyword trivia game), I came across the native
keyword.
What is the native keyword in Java used for?
Minimal runnable example
Main.java
public class Main {
public native int square(int i);
public static void main(String[] args) {
System.loadLibrary("Main");
System.out.println(new Main().square(2));
}
}
Main.c
#include <jni.h>
#include "Main.h"
JNIEXPORT jint JNICALL Java_Main_square(
JNIEnv *env, jobject obj, jint i) {
return i * i;
}
Compile and run:
sudo apt-get install build-essential openjdk-7-jdk
export JAVA_HOME='/usr/lib/jvm/java-7-openjdk-amd64'
javac Main.java
javah -jni Main
gcc -shared -fpic -o libMain.so -I${JAVA_HOME}/include \
-I${JAVA_HOME}/include/linux Main.c
java -Djava.library.path=. Main
Output:
4
Tested on Ubuntu 14.04 AMD64. Also worked with Oracle JDK 1.8.0_45.
Example on GitHub for you to play with.
Underscores in Java package / file names must be escaped with _1
in the C function name as mentioned at: Invoking JNI functions in Android package name containing underscore
Interpretation
native
allows you to:
This could be used to:
with the tradeoff of lower portability.
It is also possible for you to call Java from C, but you must first create a JVM in C: How to call Java functions from C++?
Analogous native extension APIs are also present in many other "VM languages" for the same reasons, e.g. Python, Node.js, Ruby.
Android NDK
The concept is exact the same in this context, except that you have to use Android boilerplate to set it up.
The official NDK repository contains "canonical" examples such as the hello-jni app:
In you unzip
an .apk
with NDK on Android O, you can see the pre-compiled .so
that corresponds to the native code under lib/arm64-v8a/libnative-lib.so
.
TODO confirm: furthermore, file /data/app/com.android.appname-*/oat/arm64/base.odex
, says it is a shared library, which I think is the AOT precompiled .dex corresponding to the Java files in ART, see also: What are ODEX files in Android? So maybe the Java is actually also run via a native
interface?
Example in the OpenJDK 8
Let's find find where Object#clone
is defined in jdk8u60-b27.
We will conclude that it is implemented with a native
call.
First we find:
find . -name Object.java
which leads us to jdk/src/share/classes/java/lang/Object.java#l212:
protected native Object clone() throws CloneNotSupportedException;
Now comes the hard part, finding where clone is amidst all the indirection. The query that helped me was:
find . -iname object.c
which would find either C or C++ files that might implement Object's native methods. It leads us to jdk/share/native/java/lang/Object.c#l47:
static JNINativeMethod methods[] = {
...
{"clone", "()Ljava/lang/Object;", (void *)&JVM_Clone},
};
JNIEXPORT void JNICALL
Java_java_lang_Object_registerNatives(JNIEnv *env, jclass cls)
{
(*env)->RegisterNatives(env, cls,
methods, sizeof(methods)/sizeof(methods[0]));
}
which leads us to the JVM_Clone
symbol:
grep -R JVM_Clone
which leads us to hotspot/src/share/vm/prims/jvm.cpp#l580:
JVM_ENTRY(jobject, JVM_Clone(JNIEnv* env, jobject handle))
JVMWrapper("JVM_Clone");
After expanding a bunch of macros, we come to the conclusion that this is the definition point.