Re: Ada on Android?

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

On Wed, 07 Sep 2011 20:15:12 -0400, Stephen Leake wrote:

> Brian Drummond <brian@shapes.demon.co.uk> writes:

> Ada is supposed to be able to target the JVM; also being able to target
> ARM is an orthogonal issue. Targeting the ARM would be useful for
> compiling a new cryptographic library, for example. Totally unnecessary
> for building a music player.

Not necessary. Perhaps sufficient if you can bind to the API from native 
code and write native code callbacks (you can from C/C++ in Android 2.3, 
so presumably also Ada).

I am not suggestion there is anything wrong in targetting the JVM in Ada!
However, if that turns out to be problematic, native code could offer an 
alternative approach. Ideally, both will work.

> I'm don't understand what "SDK GUI Builder" you are talking about; I
> used Eclipse and the Android toolkit, as the Hello World tutorial says.

That is the one I meant. (I don't know how you installed it; for me, it 
came with the SDK. But it's some sort of Eclipse plugin)

> It is possible to do without the GUI builder by writing either Java or
> Ada code that constructs the GUI; we have the same choice in GtkAda. I'm
> going with the recommended approach to make sure I know what its
> advantages are before I give up on it.

Interesting. As far as I could see, we have to use XML (or the builder) 
to control layout. If you can do that in [Java/Ada] instead, that's very 
good news! I missed that. Any references to it, or sample projects?

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

Just commonality with other platforms. I hear you about the mess in GTK 
underneath! 

If we can develop for Android and use the same product on other platforms 
(not just Windows), that would also be nice. Nicer, if the underlying 
windowing stuff is cleaner.

>> I'll report if/when I have a HelloWorld running.
> 
> I'm talking about the full Android windowing Hello World at
> http://developer.android.com/resources/tutorials/hello-world.html.
> _not_ just Ada.Text_IO.Put_line.

So am I; or rather, the exact equivalent "hello-jni" example from
http://developer.android.com/sdk/ndk/overview.html#samples
This ought to work on Android 1.5 and above. Then proceeding to the 
"native activity" and other samples, which will require 2.3.

For Ada.Text_IO.Put_line we are there already.

> You are way overly optimistic. But that's a necessary attitude in this
> business :).

Thanks!

- Brian