This is great! More than I hoped for. Seems you are confirming plan B. (over A). I didn't know Julia could support Vulkan/SPIR. That is the future (not now on Android and might not appear for older Android versions..). For now OpenGL ES is not supported and then no 3D for Android?
Anyway, I wasn't aiming for 3D [and/or] games as a first step. Would visualizations, graphing, Interact.jl, etc. depend on 3D..? Should 2D work right away? While a little of-topic, as more an Android question rather than a Julia one: What GUI libraries would work best there? You do not have X or Wayland (or Windows API..). Qt works on Androids (to not know about GTK) - Julia works with Qt =>Julia+Qt works on Android? And native frameworks on Android, for GUI or otherwise, what would be to most promising way to support them? I know about @linux, @unix (and @windows etc.) macros. I assume @linux would be appropriate and @android not needed (is there @freebsd..?). I'm not really sure how extensively @linux is used and for what, I just noticed for choosing wget, fetch etc. I assume some of that might break, and not sure if PATHs (directory structure is a little different..) and/or that Android is sandboxed would matter. Julia doesn't need any root access stuff? -- Palli. On Thursday, May 28, 2015 at 8:28:57 PM UTC, Simon Danisch wrote: > > I hope my 2D/3D rendering efforts get somewhere and we will then be able > to power GUI's and visualization on android. > In theory, everything should just work out, as soon as Julia runs on > android, and I extend OpenGL to OpenGL ES. > At least that's what I hope... If things go really smooth, we might just > need to wait for Vulkan, and the produced OpenGL code will just run on any > mobile device. > And if things go even better, Julia could compile directly to SPIR-V > (Vulkans Intermediate Representation, which we could generate from LLVM IR). > Like this, we could have ultimate speed even for mobile devices with very > little hassle. > All in all, if everything comes along really great, we might be able to > use Julia as a foundation for a terrific, high performance, > GUI/Visualization library, which runs everywhere LLVM can spit out assembly > for. > > > Am Donnerstag, 28. Mai 2015 16:17:08 UTC+2 schrieb Páll Haraldsson: >> >> >> I've noticed: "I guess we can announce alpha support for arm in 0.4 as >> well." (and the other thread on Julia on ARM). >> >> Now, Android runs on x86 (already covered, then if you have that kind of >> device, no need to wait for ARM support), ARM, and MIPS (actually do not >> know of a single device that uses it..). >> >> >> I would like to know the most promising way to support Android and.. >> >> A. For Firefox OS and the web in general, and hybrid apps, compiling to >> JavaScript (or Dart and then to JavaScript) would be a possibility, with >> asm.js/Emscripten. >> >> B. Just making native Android apps is probably easier. Assuming the ARM >> CPU is solved, it seems easier. And iOS would be very similar.. But would >> not work for Firefox OS - not a priority for now, but the web in general >> would be nice.. >> >> >> B. seems more promising except for the tiny/non-existent MIPS "problem".. >> Also better long term, for full Android framework support and full Julia >> support (concurrency/BLAS etc. that JavaScript would not handle). >> >> >> 1. Just getting Julia to work on Android is the first step. Just the >> REPL, wouldn't have to be Juno IDE etc. or GUI stuff. >> >> 2. You could to a lot with just the REPL and a real keyboard or just an >> alternative programmers virtual keyboard.. However, graphing would be nice, >> and what would be needed? What are the most promising GUI libraries already >> supported by Julia (or not..)? Say Qt, supported by Julia and Android. >> Would it just work? >> >> 3. Long term, making apps, even standalone (Julia "supports" that) with >> Julia. If GUIs work for graphing, is then really anything possible? I know >> Android/Java has a huge framework. Google is already supporting Android >> with Go (without any Java) as of version 1.4 and with Dart (for hybrid >> apps). For Go they have a "framework problem" going to support games at >> first. Some people are sceptical about Julia and games because of GC (I'm >> not so much). I note Go also has GC.. >> >> JavaCall.jl only works for JVM not Dalvik or ART. Would it be best to >> just use the native C support on Android or somehow go through Go? Anyone >> already tried to call Go from Julia? Rust is possible, but doesn't have GC. >> Go should be possible, just as Java, but have similar problems.. >> >> Do/could macros somehow help with supporting the full Android framework? >> Julia already has "no overhead" calling, could you generate bindings from >> automatically from some metadata and/or on the fly? >> >> >> This could be a cool pet project - anyone else working along these lines? >> >> Any reason plan B couldn't succeed relatively quickly? There are some >> ways to make apps *on* Android already, I think all crappy, Julia wouldn't >> be..? >> >> >> Thanks in advance, >> -- >> Palli. >> >>
