Re: Crazy idea: Ada for Android? (A4A?)

["Martin Krischik" <krischik@users.sourceforge.net>]

Am 07.11.2010, 11:48 Uhr, schrieb mockturtle <framefritti@gmail.com>:

> Dear.all,
> I just read an article (on a paper magazine, so no link available)
> about Android.  As I understand, Android applications are executed by
> Dalvik, a specially-tailored Java VM and that there is a converter
> from Java VM to Dalvik.

Yes. That »converter«  (called aapt) is the default way to develop.

> Since jgnat translates Ada to JVM... The idea
> of being able to write Android applications in Ada is too
> attractive... Do you believe that it is too ambitious a goal to try to
> bring Ada to the Android world?  (I have also a nice acronym with
> minimal clashes: A4A :-) :-) :-)

I tried Scala for Android and it did work. However: Scala needs a 6MB  
runtime library. aapt needs minute or so (on a 8 core MacPro) to convert  
that library and the result is 6 times big as an average Android  
application. So Scala is only an option for devices where you can  
pre-install the runtime library. That is: phones where you have root  
access.

So translated to Ada that means either “pragma No_Runtime;” (painful) or  
again pre-install the runtime-library (no good for customer devices).

Alternatively there is the NDK  for native non-VM development. But that  
would only be do-able for Ada-Core itself.

Regards

Martin

-- 
Martin Krischik
mailto://krischik@users.sourceforge.net
https://sourceforge.net/users/krischik