I took a hard look at porting Julia to Android with a friend's help who is a core Android developer at Google. The android toolchain was the most daunting part, and I got stuck at cross compilation of julia dependencies.
I personally would love to help get julia on android, as I have heard many such requests myself, but am not very familiar with the android toolchain. I can help out with the julia side. With x86 support, the right way forward would be to find a powerful android device where one can build julia from source instead of cross compliation - if such a thing is possible. -viral On Wednesday, March 9, 2016 at 9:28:06 AM UTC+5:30, Michael G wrote: > > I am maintaining the SL4A project and we are getting requests to add Julia > to the repo. Is anyone interested in helping out so we can run julia on > SL4A??? I would need a little help on implementation since I am unfamiliar > with the language.... > > -Michael > > On Thursday, May 28, 2015 at 10:17:08 AM UTC-4, Páll Haraldsson wrote: >> >> >> 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. >> >>
