I had started a thread over at the android-porting group, and figured it might be a better venue to post a request here.
Recently I have embarked on a project that aims to imbue the Android NDK gcc 4.2.1 with support for Objective-C 2.0. This project is of course to bolster the Android platform with more options for developers, and not to usurp the current application environment (more choices can make better products). As of the current status of the project, I have been able to successfully modify gcc to compile not only objc code but also objc 2.0 code. There are a few features that are still not finished with the compiler end as well as there are no frameworks that I have finished for building applications for Android. However that being said there is a potential for being able to make a directly code compatible set of frameworks targeted for the Android OS that would allow applications written for iPhone to be compiled for Android with zero code modifications to the application, in turn allowing the exact same functionality of the iPhone counterpart to work on Android. This all being the case, I need some feedback from the community. I am not looking for any sort of comparison of which platform is "better", nor am I looking for a comparison of which language is "better". If you are an iPhone developer and an Android developer: For any of your iPhone projects, which frameworks would you pose as top priority to create (other than Foundation and UIKit) How highly would you rank the need for a gui building interface (perhaps maybe something in Interface Builder that works then with both NDK based apps and Java apps)? General Android Developers: Other than arm-eabi targets, what other targets would be on the top of "must make ports of this compiler"? Would a objc interface to the Java ui be useful to your projects? What would be the upper limit of the size of a static library that you would include within your apps? Would a dynamic library stored in another application bundle (e.g. /data/data/com.example/libs/libSomethingGoesHere.so) to save on user space be preferable? People with compiler testing/building experience: I need help testing the current versions of my fork of the compiler... I narry could fathom that I could anticipate any and all potential code that could create an issue with the compiler, I need testing to track down the bugs (which I know there are already a few). The fork of the NDK gcc is being hosted at http://code.google.com/p/android-gcc-objc2-0/ I have gotten it to work reasonably so, there are a few things that still are a bit on the squirrly side, and some stuff that is still just flat out broken. Of the things that do work: Objective-C code compiles, properties work, synth'd variables work, private ivars work, blocks work but still need the runtime library (which i just need to commit the changes to add that). Sincerely, Philippe Hausler -- You received this message because you are subscribed to the Google Groups "Android Developers" group. To post to this group, send email to [email protected] To unsubscribe from this group, send email to [email protected] For more options, visit this group at http://groups.google.com/group/android-developers?hl=en
