Re: Ada on Android?

[Brian Drummond <brian@shapes.demon.co.uk>]

On Mon, 05 Sep 2011 21:16:13 -0400, Stephen Leake wrote:

> onox <denkpadje@gmail.com> writes:
> 
>> On Sep 5, 7:22 pm, Stephen Leake <stephen_le...@stephe-leake.org>
>> wrote:
>>> Has anyone here done any Ada for Android?
>>>
>>>
>> You might be interested in checking the GNATDroid (Android 2.3+) cross-
>> compiler for FreeBSD at http://www.dragonlace.net/
> 
> I don't need to target ARM; the Android API is for the JVM target.

Was.

As of Android 2.3, the API has also been opened up to native (usually 
ARM) code. See
http://developer.android.com/sdk/ndk/index.html

There was some support for C on earlier Android versions but as of 2.3 
it's supposed to be complete and for C++ too. Performance aside, this may 
be a better approach than targetting the JVM. For example, is it possible 
the Ada compiler hits some difference between JVM and Dalvik that isn't 
important to the Java compiler?

This (in 2.3) was apparently intended as a sop to the C++ community but 
opens the way to Ada as well via the Dragonlace compiler (or my so far 
unsuccessful attempts at building FSF Gnat 4.6/4.7 to target Arm on 
Linux). 

> The problem is binding to the Android API; I don't see any mention of
> that on the DragonLace.Net page.

The NDK documentation will cover that (for C++ anyway); as far as I can 
see, it's a mess. You may not ever need Java but you will need the SDK's 
GUI builder (and from the SDK examples, that still requires hand editing 
XML!)

A GTKAda binding to that mess would be nice ... 
(though probably difficult to impossible)

Meanwhile, I think getting the ACATS suite to pass on Android is quite 
impressive. Kudos to jrmarino.

Here, I have FreeBSD going in VirtualBox on my laptop, and am working 
through installing the tools via ports. (GTK took 24 hours building 
several hundred packages from source; and now GPS insists on building an 
obsolete GCC4.5.x before it will install...) 

Then my cheap Flytouch pad is only Android 2.2(Froyo). I may have to look 
around for an upgrade to 2.3...

I'll report if/when I have a HelloWorld running.

But I think we're close.
- Brian