semi OT: Android -> chrome native client in the browser

[Laeeth Isharc via Digitalmars-d]

On Thursday, 2 April 2015 at 13:24:34 UTC, Rikki Cattermole wrote:
> On 3/04/2015 2:17 a.m., Laeeth Isharc wrote:
>>> Might be an interesting little project to get D running on.
>>> Probably only worth a small toy project.
>>
>> In theory if an application works on android/x86, there should 
>> be
>> nothing more to do to get it running in the browser (just a 1 
>> minute
>> conversion).  Just need to get the android cross-compiler up 
>> and running
>> and then will see.
>
> Don't be so sure. Won't ARC not support native code?

The answer should be simple to tell, except that things have 
shifted a bit since the instructions were written so I don't yet 
have the dmd/android compiler running.

But, as I understand it (which may be mistaken): native client 
(what we have had for some time in the app store) runs only a 
subset of machine code:

https://developer.chrome.com/native-client

However for an android app using NDK, nobody has ever said you 
cannot use a regular C compiler (and indeed the D compiler was 
not written to any such rules and apparently works).  Since 
ARC-weld translates generic android apps (eg Instagram) - 
(although some do not work for unknown reasons) - it must be the 
case that ARC-weld does support native code and does something 
clever when it comes across instructions that are not permitted.

If that's right, then you can now write chrome apps using D - 
there are some already in the store that have been translated, so 
it looks like although the program is beta, they allow you to 
submit translated apps (or allow some people to submit some apps, 
anyway).

But it would be better to try than to guess.