D for Android beta

[Joakim via Digitalmars-d-announce]

The beta release of ldc 1.3, the llvm-based D compiler, is now 
out:

https://github.com/joakim-noah/android/releases

It is accompanied by a non-trivial sample app from the Android 
NDK, ported from C++ to about 1.2 klocs of D: the classic Utah 
Teapot (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Utah_teapot), updated with 
mobile touch controls.  This app also demonstrates calling Java 
functions from your D code through JNI, though most of it is 
written in D.

There are two builds of ldc, a cross-compiler that you can use 
from a linux/x64 shell to compile to Android/ARM, and a native 
compiler that you can run on your Android device itself.  As I 
pointed out last year, not only is ldc a large mixed D/C++ 
codebase that just worked on ARM, but it is possible to build 
arbitrarily large Android apps on your Android device itself, a 
first for any mobile platform:

http://forum.dlang.org/thread/ovkhtsdzlfzqrqneolyv@forum.dlang.org

This is the way the next generation of coders will get into 
coding, by tinkering with their Android devices like we did with 
Macs and PCs decades ago, and D is one the few languages that is 
already there.

I will write up instructions on how to write an Android app in D 
_on_ your Android device by using ldc and the Termux app, and get 
ldc into the Termux packages, a package repository for Android:

https://play.google.com/store/apps/details?id=com.termux&hl=en