.note.ABI-tag extension for Android

[nick clifton]

Hi Thiago,

> I'm discussing with Google engineers about adding a .note.ABI-tag to
> Android binaries, and extending the note format to allow identifying an
> Android application.

Why not use the ELF header for this ?  You have the ei_osabi value in 
the e_ident field for example which is already used to encode different 
flavours of Linux.

Of course this does not provide much room to defined the Android API in 
use...

> os_variant: 1
> android_api: 15
>
> I arbitrarily chose os_variant = 1 to mean Android.
>
> So the idea is that if desc size is>= 20, then the fifth 32-bit word
> will be examined. If it is 1, then this is an Android ELF file. The
> sixth word will then tell you the API level the application expects.

Are there a large number of Android APIs ?  I am wondering if it is 
necessart to have two new 32-bit fields, or whether it would be more 
efficient to combine them into just one ?

Cheers
   Nick