On Friday, 2 June 2017 at 08:58:01 UTC, Joakim wrote:
On Friday, 2 June 2017 at 08:36:49 UTC, Dušan Pavkov wrote:
On Thursday, 1 June 2017 at 19:31:28 UTC, Joakim wrote:
The beta release of ldc 1.3, the llvm-based D compiler, is
now out:
https://github.com/joakim-noah/android/releases
It is accompanied by a non-trivial sample app from the
Android NDK, ported from C++ to about 1.2 klocs of D: the
classic Utah Teapot
(https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Utah_teapot), updated with
mobile touch controls. This app also demonstrates calling
Java functions from your D code through JNI, though most of
it is written in D.
There are two builds of ldc, a cross-compiler that you can
use from a linux/x64 shell to compile to Android/ARM, and a
native compiler that you can run on your Android device
itself. As I pointed out last year, not only is ldc a large
mixed D/C++ codebase that just worked on ARM, but it is
possible to build arbitrarily large Android apps on your
Android device itself, a first for any mobile platform:
http://forum.dlang.org/thread/ovkhtsdzlfzqrqneo...@forum.dlang.org
This is the way the next generation of coders will get into
coding, by tinkering with their Android devices like we did
with Macs and PCs decades ago, and D is one the few languages
that is already there.
I will write up instructions on how to write an Android app
in D _on_ your Android device by using ldc and the Termux
app, and get ldc into the Termux packages, a package
repository for Android:
https://play.google.com/store/apps/details?id=com.termux&hl=en
Hello,
Thanks for the post. I have tried to run apk on 2 devices:
1. LG-E440 phone with Android 4.1.2
2. Orange Pi Lite (development board with Allwinner H3 CPU)
Android 4.4.2
On both devices there was only gray rectangle with "Teapot"
notification at the bottom for about a sec and then in upper
left corner the FPS info (around 60 on both devices), but
without any graphic. I have tried taping, dragging etc.
Are Android versions a problem or it could be something else?
Thanks in advance.
I'd guess that's the issue, as I haven't tested against those
older versions of Android and this app links against Android
API 21, ie 5.0 Lollipop:
https://github.com/joakim-noah/android/blob/master/samples/Teapot/build-apk#L17
I'm pretty sure it'd work for your older Android versions if
built slightly differently, as I used to support back to
Android API 9 until a couple months ago:
https://gist.github.com/joakim-noah/f475b0be37b3834b4e50d68996b6ee1d#file-ldc_1-1-0_android_arm-L3438
It can be still made to so but I set API 21 as the minimum,
because anything older has been declining for some time now:
http://blog.davidecoppola.com/2016/12/android-version-distribution-history-visualization-2012-2016/
I investigated this a little, as I remembered that I have an old
Android 4.4 Kitkat tablet lying around. I am able to reproduce
the grey screen, with no teapot.
I tried recompiling and linking the native D portion of the app
against API 9, but noticed that the resulting native D library
was exactly the same, with the same SHA hash. Then I remembered
that I built the small Java portion of the app against API 21
also. My guess is that is what is causing the problem, since the
Java source has to do a bit of setup so that both the Java and D
code can share the UI:
https://github.com/joakim-noah/android/blob/master/samples/Teapot/src/com/sample/teapot/TeapotNativeActivity.java
This is needed because this sample app demonstrates using JNI to
call the Java functions showUI and updateFPS, to send the
framerate from D to the Java functions to display at the top left.
I will note the Android 5.0 requirement on the release, thanks
for reporting.
