On Thursday, 8 May 2014 at 16:16:22 UTC, Joakim wrote:
Well, Android/x86 for now. I've been plugging away at getting
D running on Android/x86 and got all of the druntime modules'
unit tests and 37 of 50 phobos modules' unit tests to pass. I
had to hack dmd into producing something like packed TLS for
ELF, my patch is online here:
http://164.138.25.188/dmd/packed_tls_for_elf.patch
I simply turned off all TLS flags for ELF and spliced in the
el_picvar patch from OS X to call ___tls_get_addr. Somebody
who knows dmd better than me should verify to make sure this is
right.
I've also put online preliminary pulls for druntime and phobos:
https://github.com/D-Programming-Language/druntime/pull/784
https://github.com/D-Programming-Language/phobos/pull/2150
Now that a significant chunk of D is working on Android/x86,
I'm looking for others to pitch in. We really need to get D on
mobile, and Android/x86 is an ideal place to start. Dan Olson
has done some nice work getting D on iOS using ldc, I'm sure he
could use help too:
http://forum.dlang.org/thread/m2txc2kqxv....@comcast.net
http://forum.dlang.org/thread/m2d2h15ao3....@comcast.net
Stuff remaining to be done:
1. Fix all phobos unit tests. Those who know the failing
modules better would be best equipped to get them to work.
2. I tried creating an Android app, ie an apk, which is really
just a shared library called from the Dalvik JVM, as opposed to
the standalone executables I've been running from the Android
command line so far. The apk enters the D code and then
segfaults in the new TLS support, I'll debug that next.
3. Use ldc/gdc to build for Android/ARM.
4. Start translating various headers on Android so they can be
called from D, ie EGL, OpenGL ES, sensors, etc.
5. Integrate the D compilers into the existing Makefile-based
build system of the Android NDK. Right now, I extract the
necessary compiler and linker commands and run them by hand
when necessary.
All you need to get going is to download the latest Android NDK
(http://developer.android.com/tools/sdk/ndk/index.html) and run
Android/x86 (http://www.android-x86.org/, I recommend the 4.3
build) in a VM. I'll put up some basic setup and build
instructions if someone is interested.
I can't tell you how much I appreciate this! It's wonderful. All
the stuff I'm working on will have to go on smart phones and
tablets sooner or later. People do ask for it, because everything
is an "app" these days.
Much as I appreciate all the efforts to improve D as a language
(GC, library etc.), if we can't get into the mobile market, D
won't take off. People think "app". "What do you think?" -
"Think? Is there an app for that?"
