D for Android

Chris via Digitalmars-d digitalmars-d at puremagic.com
Fri May 9 06:22:20 PDT 2014


On Thursday, 8 May 2014 at 16:16:22 UTC, Joakim wrote:
> Well, Android/x86 for now.  I've been plugging away at getting 
> D running on Android/x86 and got all of the druntime modules' 
> unit tests and 37 of 50 phobos modules' unit tests to pass. I 
> had to hack dmd into producing something like packed TLS for 
> ELF, my patch is online here:
>
> http://164.138.25.188/dmd/packed_tls_for_elf.patch
>
> I simply turned off all TLS flags for ELF and spliced in the 
> el_picvar patch from OS X to call ___tls_get_addr.  Somebody 
> who knows dmd better than me should verify to make sure this is 
> right.
>
> I've also put online preliminary pulls for druntime and phobos:
>
> https://github.com/D-Programming-Language/druntime/pull/784
> https://github.com/D-Programming-Language/phobos/pull/2150
>
> Now that a significant chunk of D is working on Android/x86, 
> I'm looking for others to pitch in.  We really need to get D on 
> mobile, and Android/x86 is an ideal place to start.  Dan Olson 
> has done some nice work getting D on iOS using ldc, I'm sure he 
> could use help too:
>
> http://forum.dlang.org/thread/m2txc2kqxv.fsf@comcast.net
> http://forum.dlang.org/thread/m2d2h15ao3.fsf@comcast.net
>
> Stuff remaining to be done:
>
> 1. Fix all phobos unit tests.  Those who know the failing 
> modules better would be best equipped to get them to work.
>
> 2. I tried creating an Android app, ie an apk, which is really 
> just a shared library called from the Dalvik JVM, as opposed to 
> the standalone executables I've been running from the Android 
> command line so far.  The apk enters the D code and then 
> segfaults in the new TLS support, I'll debug that next.
>
> 3. Use ldc/gdc to build for Android/ARM.
>
> 4. Start translating various headers on Android so they can be 
> called from D, ie EGL, OpenGL ES, sensors, etc.
>
> 5. Integrate the D compilers into the existing Makefile-based 
> build system of the Android NDK.  Right now, I extract the 
> necessary compiler and linker commands and run them by hand 
> when necessary.
>
> All you need to get going is to download the latest Android NDK 
> (http://developer.android.com/tools/sdk/ndk/index.html) and run 
> Android/x86 (http://www.android-x86.org/, I recommend the 4.3 
> build) in a VM.  I'll put up some basic setup and build 
> instructions if someone is interested.

I can't tell you how much I appreciate this! It's wonderful. All 
the stuff I'm working on will have to go on smart phones and 
tablets sooner or later. People do ask for it, because everything 
is an "app" these days.

Much as I appreciate all the efforts to improve D as a language 
(GC, library etc.), if we can't get into the mobile market, D 
won't take off. People think "app". "What do you think?" - 
"Think? Is there an app for that?"


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