On 12/04/2017 10:37 AM, Joakim wrote:
On Friday, 7 April 2017 at 09:40:26 UTC, rikki cattermole wrote:
On 07/04/2017 10:34 AM, Joakim wrote:
On Thursday, 6 April 2017 at 05:32:41 UTC, rikki cattermole wrote:
IMO there is two things that need to be done to get D for mobile:
1: ldc needs to natively target and distribute binaries for Android
(MIPS, ARM, at least).
I'm not sure what you mean by "natively target." Do you mean that the
shipping ldc compiler should come with Android/ARM target support built
in? That can be done, but it's useless without a stdlib cross-compiled
for the target and ldc doesn't provide the cross-compiler
scripts/toolchain with its releases that would allow you to easily start
cross-compiling, even though the compiler itself is capable. Instead, I
provide a cross-compiler for linux/x64 that comes with a cross-compiled
stdlib for Android/ARM, and link to instructions on how to use it with
the Android NDK toolchain.
So basically druntime, Phobos all good to go basically be able to do
ldc2 test.d and get a valid (yet to be apk'd) executable. But the
point was to have it all officially supported and ready to go with
clear instructions on how to use it.
That's all available from my Android releases: the only part you could
say is missing is "official support," since they're not put out on ldc's
official github release page.
There are a couple issues that block that, one of which I mentioned
above: ldc has never released a cross-compiler with a cross-compiled
stdlib, or at least scripts that make it easy to cross-compile the
stdlib yourself, and instructions on integrating with some
cross-compilation toolchain. Another is that my cross-compiler
currently requires a lightly tweaked llvm.
2: extern(JNI) seriously, its a pain to work with Java over JNI
otherwise. It would be worse then not having extern(Obj-C).
I don't think it's that bad, but sure, we could always make it easier.
After working on djvm, there is no way I'd want to not have it. It's
just too hard to do it library only.
I have not tried djvm yet, perhaps we could work together on this.
I don't have the time nor knowledge of dmd-fe internals to do this. It
really needs to be a priority of the D Foundation to accomplish this or
a very highly motivated individual with time to burn.
JNI itself isn't hard to work with, its mapping classes for D easily to
it which is hard. Especially when inheritance comes into play.
