Thanks for all of the various responses. I looked at Delphi XE7 for Android development and whilst it would be usable the cost is excessive (I'm still extensively using Delphi 7 so there's no upgrade path for me).
I have spent quite a bit of time using Android Studio to gain familiarisation. The GUI designer is much improved and there's some nice coding features in the IntelliJ. The annoying part is that it doesn't (yet) create the method templates like the RAD tools (Delphi, Visual Studio for .NET) do. The USB device debugger is good although can sometimes take some time to set up depending on your device (e.g. the MotoG USB driver is included in the Linux version of Android Studio but not in the Windows version so you have to find it on the web and download the Motorola Device Manager to install if for Windows). The recommendations I am receiving are to stay away from the 3rd party tools and stick with Android Studio to ensure compatibility in the future. I believe that Google will keep improving Android Studio so hopefully the annoyances like the lack of event method creation will be solved in a reasonable timeframe. Android development is a totally different "kettle of fish" to classical Windows development. The terminology takes some time to get one's head around and it seems complex to me. Java itself is relatively straightforward. Eric Date: Fri, 23 Jan 2015 08:16:28 +1300 From: [email protected] To: [email protected] Subject: Re: [DUG] XE7 and Android Development I use Delphi for Android now. I am not developing MAJOR apps. but some that are interesting.Before Embarcadero provided android support, I used a tool called Basic4Android. I can highly recommend it. Yes, as the name suggests, its a basic language, but its a bit more VB.NET in style. It compiles down to a java classes etc. and has a gui designer and I have to admit, the debugging is a lot quicker than the Delphi one. Take a look. I think there is a free trial, if not its only $49 for support. Jeremy On Thu, Jan 22, 2015 at 9:11 PM, Robo <[email protected]> wrote: If it's a brand new app for Android only, just use Android Studio. It's now base on IntelliJ instead of Eclipse, you should revisit it. On Thu, Jan 22, 2015 at 7:33 AM, Eric A <[email protected]> wrote: Many thanks to all contributors for the feedback. I just need to develop a Bluetooth App for Android devices only (with some WiFi network transfer also). I did try Eclipse with ADT some years ago and was very disappointed with the UI designer so gave up. I understand that Android Studio has a completely new UI designer so I will give that a try. --- Original Message --- From: "Jolyon Smith" <[email protected]> Sent: January 22, 2015 7:17 PM To: "NZ Borland Developers Group - Delphi List" <[email protected]> Subject: Re: [DUG] XE7 and Android Development @David Brennan - I don't see how you reach the conclusion that XE7 + FireMonkey makes sense "if you have an existing code base", given that if you aren't already developing in FMX then that existing codebase is almost certainly VCL and given all the observations you made about how utterly UN-re-usable your existing VCL code base was in your case. The pre-amble seems to point to the exact opposite conclusion. No ? For Eric, I would ask why you are interested in using Delphi for this ? If it is to exploit existing VCL code, then you have little chance of realising any benefit without an awful lot of work (perhaps even more than starting from scratch with an alternative tool/tech). If you seek to leverage familiarity with Delphi to fully exploit any and all Android devices, I suspect you will be similarly disappointed both because the Android support is simply not complete as well as because "Delphi for Android" is a quite different animal than the Delphi you are used to. You might as well learn Java or apply any knowledge you may have of C# with Xamarin. Or, if you simply wish to continue using Pascal, you could look at RemObjects Oxygene (also previously known as Delphi Prism, in it's .NET garb as re-branded by Embarcadero for a time). I developed a very simple app in Oxygene for Android, iOS and WinPhone. In all three cases the app was developed using Oxygene (ObjectPascal with knobs on) but compiles to genuine, platform native binaries (i.e indistinguishable from those produced by Android Studio, Xcode or Visual Studio). The Android version is here if you are curious: https://play.google.com/store/apps/details?id=itchbox.txt2park&hl=en The downside of the Oxygene approach (as some see it) is that you have to learn how to develop for each platform since there is no comprehensive cross platform abstraction library (although there is a library - Sugar - which makes a certain amount of re-use possible at the RTL layer - sharing common string manipulation routines etc etc). But imho this platform specific aspect of the approach is absolutely NOT a downside for any serious mobile developer as you will quickly realise when you come to appreciate the differences between the platforms and learn how to write apps properly that look and behave properly on each platform, instead of taking a "one size fits all" approach. It also means that you are learning those platforms and if necessary can apply that knowledge directly to development using the platform native tool chains. i.e. With my simple app I have learned how to program a (simple, VERY simple) SMS sender app for Android, iOS and Windows Phone. I happened to use Pascal, but what I learned about the platforms is just as directly applicable in Java, Objective-C or C# (respectively). It also means that you can *learn* from people with expertise in the framework even if they are using other languages. It is worth mentioning that all 3 versions of the app were developed in just one weekend even though there was zero code re-use between them. The app is essentially 100% UI, and each platform works completely differently when it comes to the SMS APi's so there was no real chance for useful code re-use in such an app anyway. Actually, there were 6 apps in total since I also learned the advertising API's and controls appropriate for each platform (again, different in each case) and created two separate versions of the app for each platform, one free/ad supported, the other paid for with no ads. Creating the 3 ad supported apps was another weekend. :) But Oxygene also is not hosted on Linux, being a Visual Studio plug-in (it is also supported by the free VS Community Edition, so there's no extra cost for using VS "Pro" any more). However RemObjects are also working on "Fire", an OS X hosted IDE (still not Linux but at least also Unix based) for all their languages, since they also provide their own C# compiler as well as 'Silver' - a.k.a Apple Swift. All three languages support all platforms: Java/Android, iOS/OS X, .NET/WPhone. Just my $2 (it was going to be 2c but thought I'd better protect it against future inflation). :) On 22 January 2015 at 16:29, David Brennan <[email protected]> wrote: We created an Android app in XE6 using a moderate amount of code from one of our big Delphi projects. It went OK and we successfully demonstrated the app on phones at a trade show recently, people liked the app. During development we had a few annoyances with how Firemonkey behaved but in general it wasn’t too bad. However getting our existing code (even units with no forms/frames) to work was a bigger issue than expected. We did it in a development branch were we hacked things a moderate amount to get uses clauses and everything to compile with ifdefs, commenting stuff out, etc. A surprising amount of basic classes such as TPoint, TRect, etc (I think if I am remembering correctly) are not available in Firemonkey so we had to do quite a bit of hacking. As a result the ‘hacked’ development branch can’t be used to compile VCL apps and will be thrown out (effectively it was a prototype). The next step is for us to refactor our code properly to allow us to cross compile between VCL and Firemonkey with a minimum of ifdefs. This will be a reasonable sized project so it is waiting while other more valuable projects are being worked on. Based on that fairly limited experience we believe Firemonkey to be viable for serious apps and we think it makes good sense if you have an existing code base which you want to cross compile between Windows and Android/iOS. Whether Firemonkey is the best choice for someone who doesn’t need to cross compile is a different matter, you get some benefits from prior Delphi experience but the controls, designer and some RTL portions are different so you still have a bit of a learning curve. Cheers, David. From: [email protected] [mailto:[email protected]] On Behalf Of Eric A Sent: Thursday, 22 January 2015 3:15 p.m. To: [email protected] Subject: [DUG] XE7 and Android Development Has anyone in the DUG : a) done serious Android device development using XE? b) installed and used XE7, particularly for Android apps? If not XE, what are people using/recommending as the best development platform for Android app development? (would be nice if it could be hosted on Linux, but not essential). Eric _______________________________________________ NZ Borland Developers Group - Delphi mailing list Post: [email protected] Admin: http://delphi.org.nz/mailman/listinfo/delphi Unsubscribe: send an email to [email protected] with Subject: unsubscribe _______________________________________________ NZ Borland Developers Group - Delphi mailing list Post: [email protected] Admin: http://delphi.org.nz/mailman/listinfo/delphi Unsubscribe: send an email to [email protected] with Subject: unsubscribe _______________________________________________ NZ Borland Developers Group - Delphi mailing list Post: [email protected] Admin: http://delphi.org.nz/mailman/listinfo/delphi Unsubscribe: send an email to [email protected] with Subject: unsubscribe _______________________________________________ NZ Borland Developers Group - Delphi mailing list Post: [email protected] Admin: http://delphi.org.nz/mailman/listinfo/delphi Unsubscribe: send an email to [email protected] with Subject: unsubscribe
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