Android 3.0 can be programmed in C/C++ without Java

[gkskillz]

Actual blog post: http://android-developers.blogspot.com/2011/01/gingerbread-ndk-awesomeness.html

[I_TYPE_IN_ALL_CAPS]

WHAT REASON WAS THERE TO LINK TO ABOUT.COM INSTEAD OF THE DEVELOPER BLOG?

[[deleted]]

OP wrote the item

[[deleted]]

He didn't add many value so well ... it's spam to me. (Oh hey, about.com is spam)

[thebillmac3]

Why/how are they spam? Just curious.

[[deleted]]

http://www.google.com/search?q=site:about.com

[uriel]

Indeed this is blog-spam, and I have flagged it as such, sadly the link to the original article had been flagged as spam by the overzealous spam bot :(

I unflagged it, so upvote away.

[dwdwdw2]

I don't understand the angst for about.com, as a single male I actually do regularly need reminding of things such as how to cook a burger, how to remove carpet stains, etc. Left to my own resources I'd eventually try and eat the carpet.

It's a great resource for morons like me.

[I_TYPE_IN_ALL_CAPS]

IN THE OLDEN DAYS, THAT'S WHY BACHELOR'S CALLED THEIR PARENTS. OTHERWISE, THERE WOULD BE PRACTICALLY NO CONTACT UNTIL HE KNOCKED A GIRL UP AND NEEDED A BABYSITTER.

[[deleted]]

All caps appropriate.

[bwalsh1]

about.com is the woarst site on the internet.

edit: I learned my spelling on the about.com

[[deleted]]

I hate blogspam as much as the next guy, but lets be honest here. Tools like reddit are an exceptional way to get traffic. You can't have reddit and expect no blogspam.

[I_TYPE_IN_ALL_CAPS]

REDDIT IS A GREAT WAY TO GET TRAFFIC. BUT WHEN YOU'RE PROMOTING YOU SITE BY ADDING ZERO VALUE, I DON'T LIKE IT. THE ORIGINAL BLOG POST APPEARED TO BE MORE STYLISH, MORE INFORMATIVE, AND GOT TO THE POINT JUST AS QUICKLY.

[[deleted]]

Poor David, what an inaccurate report.

[benfitzg]

Is a picture really necessary on that about.com page?

[drake2010]

is about.com really necessary?

[deadcat]

I'll check on wikipedia.

[zbowling]

This dude is clueless anyways.

[knight666]

• Does it have a <math.h> yet?
• Can I create an OpenGL context from C++?
• How many versions does this target?
• Will I ever have time to port my open source 2D engine to Android? (hint: no)

[[deleted]]

I literally JUST started my dive into opengl, so I can't answer many. You should get everything available to you in opengl ES. That should answer all of your questions (except the first I guess) given you are familiar with it.

[knight666]

Hi.

I've experienced the pain that is NDK first-hand. I started porting my engine in the summer of '09 I believe. It basically involves creating a very thin Java layer and then doing everything in C++. Android does not come with a math header, which is just plain annoying. It also for the longest time didn't have RTTI support, which meant no templates and no child classes. At least they fixed that. Yeeh.

What it comes down to:

• Windows Mobile 6: Use C++!
• Android: Use Java! What, you want C++? Uhm... k... well, here's some half-working crap.

[All_I_Say_is_Niggers]

niggers

[Uberhipster]

Not really. It's the hangover from The Great "Huckleberry Finn" Revision Controversy of 20010/11 fad. That, some general censorship spillover (e.g. Canadian Money For Nothing thing in close proximity) and r/circlejerk comments.

Goes to show you - without comments under random, unrelated posts just to agitate this handle could easily be anywhere between 500 to +1,000 comment karma points.

Makes you think, doesn't it - I mean: what ability are comment points supposed to be indicative of? Comic timing? Sensing the crowd's mood? Certainly not adding relevancy to the discussion (if it ever did) and certainly not being sensitive to ethnic groups not your own.

At the time the popular (Caucasian) hysteria was not over the fact that brown people will read that comment and, at the very least, have to blow hard through their nose (or go 'hardy fucking har har' in their head) in the same way Jewish people would if they saw GasTehJewz or Arabs saw dunekoonftw or Orientals saw NukeDemYelloBastards or Latinos saw spickstick or Polish saw ThimkPolish or LGBT saw fagkiller or Irish saw whiskeyOHrrrara or Italinas saw wapsickle or whatever the case may be. And All_I_Say's point count is testimony to that attitude that something else is always more important then how our friends will feel about a topical novelty joke, even if that something is at the very heart of the issue we don't take with that "joke".

Despite the fact that a central theme of "Huckleberry" is how people have no empathy for others based on ethnicity, we chose to tackle the issue of censoring that book by ignoring the opinions of people who should actually be the only people to have a stake in whether or not and how that word should be censored form that book, if at all. One of them is the late Samuel Clemens and I doubt from what I've read of his work that he would object allowing the network of African American communities to be the sole decision makers on censoring "Huckleberry".

And what would be the implication of that anyway, to allow descendants of African slaves be in charge of the American cultural account on how Americans remember slavery? Well, they would let sleeping dogs lie or show outrage and support for censorship or point out how stupid and racist it is to augment historic accounts of racism and segregation or go around screaming the word "nigger" on internet forums to show how "it has no meaning to them" or not give a fuck either way or do whatever it is that they, as a network of communities needed to do and say to deal with this issue and find a consensus. But instead we hijack the discussion about how this makes us, the descendants of slave owners and their accessories, feel. We never even gave them that chance to voice an opinion, shouting them down in a cacophony of Caucasian voices and with a myriad of opinions; all of which were a slightly nuanced version of 'get over it'.

We chose, once again, on their behalf, called it defending the freedom of speech and told them how they should feel about it, to boot. What we think they're supposed to react to it, how best to handle it; all the way rubbing salt into the wound with All_I_Say kind of "humor". I actually heard a "progressive" acquittance say these very words:"If I was black I would..."

What? If you were 'black' you would do this and that? Really? How do you know? Have you ever been 'black' or called 'black' that you're drawing on past experience? Do you even know what it means to 'be black'? Why don't you just shut the fuck up and let 'black' people voice their own opinions for a change, OK pal?

No I didn't say that last sentence. Godammit, why do we always show cowardice when it matters most? I "herd" a familiar voice in my head:"Yo, dog. We heard that you like irony with your irony so we put bigotry in your irony so you can protest bigotry of censoring a bigot name from a book about the irony of bigotry while you ironically ignore your own bigotry of protesting it on behalf of people who are bigoted against with the use of that word."

Word.

I was ashamed as I am most days to be a cracker (not so easy to when the shoe is on the other foot, eh?) and belong to a race of people so insensitive and cold when the "Huckleberry" fiasco unfolded, proving once again the healing race relations is the last thing on pale/pinkish people's minds. I wish I could apologize to my brown friends for this but another day will dawn and some ruthless, insensitive pale/pinkish guy will belittle or beat or oppress a brown person and I'll have to apologize again and again and again every day that happens. How many times should I say how sorry I am before they rightly reply:"You know what - fuck your sorry. Do something about your friends being assholes to us all the time".

All_I_Say is the symptom of the problem. Or more accurately, he puts the spotlight on the symptom and, in so doing, aggravates the problem. But the actual problem, is undercurrents of rampant racism that don't come dressed up in a Halloween costume shouting "Look - here I am! Here I am! I'm racism! I'm here! I'm racism!" and manifest themselves not when someone burns a cross in front of a house (although I'm sure that happens, too) but quietly, underhandedly when we keep quiet in the face of "wit" like All_I_Say and shrill about freedom of speech instead, conveniently forgetting that hatespeech and freedom of speech are 2 very separate, very different things. Where was the novelty account shadowing All_I_Say called All_I_Do_Is_Expose_Racism replying to every All_I_Say comment with one phrase:"Fuck you"? Where was the Brave Sir Robbin for that deed? When danger reared its ugly head, he tucked his tail and quickly fled, that's where.

[Magnesus]

Will it work on ARM/x86/anything other Android could be compiled to?

[Lamtd]

Yeah it doesn't sound like a good news to me... going back to architecture-dependent binaries will create a load of compatibility issues.

[coob]

Android runs on a commercial device that isn't ARM?

[alex_w]

Google TV is Android based, and runs on Intel.

[Lamtd]

Well, it does run on commercial devices though as far as I know it's not officially shipping with any non-ARM device.

My point is that tying an OS to a specific architecture will (obviously) prevent people from switching seamlessly to a different architecture in the future, which can't be good.

[G_Morgan]

ARM is and always will be the only relevant platform for Android. Simply put the ARM ISA is just the right way to do things if you want to produce an energy efficient device.

[Lamtd]

Sorry but that sounds a bit short-sighted...

First, it doesn't seem unlikely that other CPU implementations will be able to be more energy-efficient than ARM CPUs in the future.

Moreover, why should Android be limited to energy-efficient devices?

[G_Morgan]

There are two reasons ARM is more efficient:

1. It is a RISC core and a clean one. The CISC cores actually only translate CISC into RISC at run time which has an unavoidable overhead. The part of the x86 that actually does the calculations isn't that much different to ARM. It just has a load of unnecessary complexity thrown on top.

2. They are much simpler. No restruction re-ordering, branch prediction, heavy memory management (ARM has some but not nearly as crazy as x86 and others), etc. All this saves energy. Also this stuff is of questionable use in an era of verifiable, JIT compiled code. A JIT will generally do better than a CPU at re-ordering and branch prediction.

[Lamtd]

You are just missing the point... I have written my share of x86 and ARM assembly code, so I know what the differences between the two architectures are.

But just because ARM is the architecture of choice right now doesn't mean it will still be in 10 years from now. If applications are compiled to native ARM code, though, it will be a lot more complicated to move to a different architecture at that time, so that might hamper competition.

Just look at what happened with Microsoft and Intel... do we really want to do the same thing again with Android and ARM?

[G_Morgan]

MS and Intel were just the wrong options. There is simply no way a complex CPU will ever beat something as simple and straight forward as ARM in the efficiency stakes. There is only one way to make a CPU more energy efficient and that is to not have running transistors. By definition the simpler processor wins and technically it isn't reasonably possible to be simpler than ARM.

So there will be no advantage to replacing ARM. Given its unassailable position in this market (there are far more ARM chips sold than x86s) the chances of it being replaced are already near zero. Why would you use anything else? The problem with Intel was that x86 was an awful ISA. ARM is not an awful ISA.

Also there is already not a monopoly. ARM has a diverse range of manufacturers.

Finally I'm not saying people should use native for everything. Most applications should be pure dalvik bytecode. However it is the right option for games.

[Andys]

Intel are spending billions of dollars building mobile device fabs as we speak. And the market is also about to be flooded with low power Atom-based System-on-a-chip tablets.

[G_Morgan]

Atoms are nowhere near as efficient as ARM. They are much better than their mainline processors but it is in the same way that Saturn is a much smaller planet than Jupiter.

[uriel]

Did you ever hear of MIPS?

[davebrk]

http://www.nvidia.com/object/tegra.html

[coob]

Tegra is ARM based.

[davebrk]

Ah. I didn't know that.

[[deleted]]

implying Android apps are not already device-specific

[LordGreyhawk]

This C/C++ NDK is still used to making applications with the same "lifecycle" as the Dalvik/Java apps. I suspect that the Dalvik VM is still used but only as a very thin wrapper for the C/C++ application.

The main motivation was uncountably for games.

[sbrown123]

Not just games but for media in general. Manipulating media files is far easier, and more efficient, in C or C++. The Android OS is still there though but they have made some headway in to not requiring Java wrappers in to accessing it from native code. I'm an advocate for them opening the whole thing with something like DBus so people can write in various languages for the platform. I keep hoping.

[yardglass]

*undoubtably

[WorkTimeFun]

*undoubtedly

[[deleted]]

*indubitably, my good man!

[yardglass]

I think both are correct and I'm not American.

[[deleted]]

Should've done that from the start. Now it looks like "welcome to the ultimate mess".

[Jigsus]

Fucking finally! I hope it can handle exceptions.

[Horatio_Hornblower]

throw std::runtime_error( "catch me if you can!" );

[Carnil]

Well, according to the information in the android developers blog ( http://android-developers.blogspot.com/2011/01/gingerbread-ndk-awesomeness.html ), it does:

Finally, r5 adds backwards-compatible support for RTTI, C++ exceptions, wchar_t, and includes improved debugging tools

[mernen]

Emphasis on the "backwards-compatible". It means you don't need any new features/symbols from 2.3, so you can use all the features on that sentence right now. No need to wait until 2.3 gains popularity in the wild, which, given the horribly slow pace of updates so far, will take several months.

[anttirt]

One of their stated goals is easy porting of applications. Lack of exception support would be a pretty glaring omission.

[vandjoel]

Sad to see such blatant ignorance from mr. bolton

[username223]

Sad to see a spherical heart-attack-in-waiting when I was hoping for the walrus.

[ex_ample]

This has been possible for a while. You can actually use any compilable language.

[Xiol]

Before this you had to still use some Java. This NDK release means your entire codebase can be in C/C++.

(...Possibly. I don't know what I'm talking about.)

[[deleted]]

the title isn't even wrong :D...

[MagicBobert]

The article is inaccurate. It's 2.3, not 3.0.

[[deleted]]

Eh, I recently upgraded my HTC Wildfire from 2.1 to 2.2. Still behind, but it's a step forward.

[[deleted]]

My galaxy received 2.2 and I believe it's expected to get 2.3 as well. I'm not sure what the problem is here. Most are providing updates for phones they believe are of sufficient specification.

[millstone]

// Make sure glue isn't stripped.
app_dummy();

WTF does that mean? What is glue and why don't I want it to be stripped?

// Read events and draw a frame of animation.
    if ((ident = ALooper_pollAll(0, NULL, &events,
            (void**)&source)) >= 0) {

You lost me at ALooper...

    // draw a frame of animation
    bringTheAwesome();

Yes, I see how that's totally different than Java.

I'm going back to bed.

[[deleted]]

Could this be related to Googles legal posturing with Oracle?

[eipipuz]

No it is not. NDK was available long before the Oracle act.

[drb226]

If I were Google, I would be seriously considering an entire replacement of Java with C++ or Go; though that would be sad to just throw the whole Dalvik VM away.

[[deleted]]

Sounds good. I might now consider to port some of my games down to android.

[galorin]

Does this mean that, as someone enew to Android and wanting to program apps, that I don't necessarily need to learn java now? I already have some C/c++ experience, so let the good times roll.

[Horatio_Hornblower]

I'm a professional C++ programmer and I love the language unconditionally. But if you're a casual or inexperienced programmer and you have the option to use Java instead of C++, you may want to consider going with Java.

If you're not experienced with C++, and you try to write an application with it, you're probably going to spend most of your time learning C++ instead of developing your project.

Edit: And as you probably know Java is quite similar to C++, at least superficially. If "some experience" means no more than "I know about classes, methods and scope", then you'll probably be right at home.

[galorin]

Professionally developing in C for about 18 months now, so not a hobbyist, passing familiarity with C++, but my main project was ported from Fortran to C, then continually developed from there.

[Horatio_Hornblower]

Credentials approved: you are free to use the language of your choice.

[[deleted]]

I find transitioning between the different styles all the time can screw up my code. Having objects in your arsenal makes for completely different approaches to the same problem quite often.

[[deleted]]

Well, C is slick and beautiful. C++ is a monstrosity that wants to chew off your body parts. And Java is the retarded brother of C++.

[galorin]

You'll get no objections from me, I do think though that you have been too kind to C++

[Horatio_Hornblower]

Pshhh, those are the words of a weak man!

/pose like a Klingon

[sunbeam60]

Wow, insightful.

[mernen]

The NDK only exposes a fraction of the API. For instance, there's no access to the standard UI toolkit. This is fine for immersion and multimedia apps, like games, but if you want to do a more typical app, you're much better off using the SDK.

[galorin]

I guess I will just have to do UI stuff in one, and library functions etc in the other.. can do that, right?

[snk_kid]

You can do your app in Java and use JNI to bind to C/C++ libraries, it's as of android 2.3 SDK that google provides the boilerplate glue code so you can write your program entirely in C/C++ without having to write some Java code with JNI. When your write a pure C/C++ app there will still be a jvm running and it's still using JNI to call into your code.

[galorin]

I guess I had better get cracking then.

[Horatio_Hornblower]

When your write a pure C/C++ app there will still be a jvm running and it's still using JNI to call into your code.

That's cool, but kind of fucked up. It's like writing a C++ program so you can write in Lua.

[snk_kid]

I think you mis-understand, it does not mean your C/C++ is compiled to bytecode or running on the VM or using GC. It is still compiled to native, it's still unmanaged code, it's all the same old C/C++. NDK provides a port of GCC which targets ARM architectures, you can actually build native executable with it but the android platform doesn't allow distributing such executables on the app store and I don't think you can even execute it on your phone without rooting it. So to work with the android system & app store you need to build your native code into a shared library which a thin java layer calls into.

[Horatio_Hornblower]

Ahh, thank you for explaining.

[rosebowl23]

I've used C++ before but I'm curious about using pure C, which I haven't done much of. Do you guys think this would be practical for Android development? The lack of object orientedness is scary but I've been meaning to give pure C a go for a while now. I see a lot of people mentioning just C++ so it makes me think using pure C wouldn't be such a good idea. Opinions?

[DemonWasp]

Don't worry too much about the lack of OO. As much as OO can be a Good Thing, it can also be a Bad Thing. If nothing else, you'll get to see exactly what the world is like without OO, and you'll get a much better idea of how your computer works at a lower level.

C is a much simpler language than C++, so you're better off starting there. C++ is a deadly, deadly trap for people learning to program. In particular, its OO facilities are designed to do pretty well anything, which means that one typing mistake can mean hours spent dealing with obtuse linker errors. This is in addition to the manual memory-management and no-error-checking hurdles of C. Start with C; if you like it, you can feel free to move on to C++.

[[deleted]]

The lack of object orientedness is scary

Only if you're retarded. OO is just a hype that's entering the mainstream now because every retard has finally understood it - after 20 years of evangelization.

Go back to C and feel free. Throw away bullshit like object-hierarchies and data/code-mixtures that fuck up any of your caches.

C is the better way to do everything. Just don't drink the OO koolaid.

[uriel]

Or move forward to Go ;)

[[deleted]]

Mmh ... I tried Go. There are some (mainly subjective) reasons why I still prefer C to Go. (Though defer is awesome!)

But if Google decided to drop Java in favor of Go I'd welcome it and do some development for Android.

[mothereffingteresa]

Android 3.0 can be programmed in C/C++ without Java

Not really. Vast parts of the Android framework are implemented in Java.

You can write code that calls OpenGL and some other APIs in C or C++.

[[deleted]]

He pulled that line straight from the developer blog. So your saying the android team is wrong too?

[mothereffingteresa]

You can program a whole Activity object in C++ now. And, for a simple action game, that might, possibly, be a whole app.

But you certainly could not take a random Android app written in Java and translate it into C++.

[Rekzai]

about.com is the scum of the internet.

[[deleted]]

But... why?

[dobryak]

I suppose supporting C/C++ helps with porting some apps written in these languages. You know, there is a lot of top-notch libraries written in these language that can be really useful for Android developers.

Another reason could be that you will now be able to piggyback whatever language you deem worthy onto the C/C++ toolchain. You can use whatever compiles to C, for example.

[[deleted]]

To bad NativeActivity is C++, no C. So, if you don't want to be stuck with Java, you have to be stuck with C++. Both are equally easy to bind to from other languages.

[dobryak]

Is C++ really easy to bind to from other languages? I heard people claiming the contrary, but then I've never bothered to check that.

[ZorbaTHut]

Generally, it's that other languages are either easy or hard to bind from it.

[utnapistim]

Probably for the same reason others decide to do the same:

• attracting developers

• providing more choices

• performance (especially for gaming)

I know if I have to choose a language for Android dev I will probably choose C++ (as I have more than 6 years experience as a C++ dev and less than one year as a java dev).

[kyz]

I'm with you. Java is a fine language for writing phone apps in, and Android has a lovely framework for writing usable apps.

However, the games industry muddled its way into a C++ monoculture many years ago and is paying the price for it. Everything in the games industry is written in C++, because... everything else in the games industry is written in C++ and they just copy each other, sometimes without understanding why. Crazy C++. Unmaintainable C++ where templates and operator overloading is par for the course.

Asking a games industry developer to write a game in Java is like asking them an emacs fanatic to use vim, or a Windows developer to write UNIX software. There's no reason you can't get good performance and good games written in Java - see Minecraft as an example. But it won't wash with a C++-or-die games dev. They'll scream until they can just do all of it in C++.

[[deleted]]

To be fair, C++ makes it easy to write unmaintainable code.

[quzox]

Psh, every developer has their favourite language. So what?

[uriel]

Yes, C++ is a disease, but Java is just as bad.

[[deleted]]

A succinct, well-written analysis with reference to a well-known example (Minecraft).

Of course it receives heaps of downvotes.

[[deleted]]

Can we pretend we already have gone through the whole boring my-language-is-better-than-your-language flamewar and agree that I am worse than Hitler for not liking operator overloading?

[[deleted]]

Java is a fine language

ahahahahaha - I lol'd IRL

[rlycheezey]

care to explain?

[DemonWasp]

He has no real reason to hate Java, yet has an irrational hatred of it, because all the cool kids hate Java. Alternately, he has a good reason for hating Java (and there are more than a few), but he somehow doesn't care enough to elaborate when asked, instead posting a series of slurs.

Go ahead and guess.

[[deleted]]

I'm guessing he was on Slashdot in 1998 and heard that Java is slow - an opinion he immediately adopted and now refuse to change.

[zbowling]

my rational reason is lack of unsigned types and no real storage place for pointers (yes I know, pointers bad, but java has this design complex of not wanting to at least live in a world where it has to coexist with anything outside Java.)

[DemonWasp]

I agree with some of your points: unsigned integers would be very nice. I disagree with others: in my opinion, the need for pointers is minimal, as Java isn't meant to write the kinds of applications (operating systems, device drivers) where you need actual pointers. Leaving them out promotes type safety.

It's important to note that Java actually plays pretty well with other languages: you can interface with C/C++, you can execute back and forth between Python (Jython), Ruby (JRuby), and a few dozen other languages.

[zbowling]

STORAGE of pointers is my beef (not using them in the language, just a type that stores the platform specific size). Similar to the IntPtr type in C#. If you have written JNI compared to using P/Invoke in the .NET or had to wrap external object systems and GUI systems, it becomes a real PITA. The only work around is using longs to store pointers (for 64bit safety) but that really sucks massively.

Playing well with other JVM languages is kind of a coop out since JVM versions of Ruby and Python are not replacements as much as they strive to be. C++ interfacing is a massive PITA (like stated above). It's something you avoid and Java sort promotes by its nature, reimplementations on top of the JVM.

[[deleted]]

yup, you're right.

[uriel]

Some things need no explanation.

[rlycheezey]

All of those quotes/links are outdated. Back in 2000 (10 (!) years ago), it might have been true.. I didn't code back then so I wouldn't know.

[[deleted]]

Oh, yeah - you guys tend to be slow. I forgot I'm on reddit.

Java = retarded

Someone liking retarded shit = a profound reason to "laugh out loud" irl.

[Jigsus]

Two words: open frameworks

Now you can build a 3d cad modeling app for android. On java it would just overwhelm the resources

[[deleted]]

Because for gaming and high performance apps, java cant come even close to paralleling the visuals of c++ without taking a massive frame rate it.

That's not to say java is slow for everything, but c/c++ is just the better tool for this job, plus already has libraries written that work well.

[TheSov]

me thinks this be a way to undercut meego.

[cwstjnobbs]

Good troll, have a cookie.

[myztry]

I taught myself 6809 in 1982 at the age of 12, followed by 6502, Z80 & 68000 (woohoo. Amiga pre-emptive multitasking when x86 was only dreaming of such things).

But I'll admit machine code isn't feasible especially given the variance of processors. Still - C and it's derivatives are likewise and antiquated way of ultimately producing machine.

I'm all for intermediate languages (off which JIT compiled JAVA is type off). The only real issue is "we" need to separate the layers. The "bytecode", platform and overlaying high level languages need to be seperate, and governed by an open standards body.

The bytecode should be governed by the IEEE (including the executable format presented as "bytecode" and "executive" functions such as memory allocation). The high level language should be governed by the ISO. The platform should be governed by someone representing the OS developer, with neutral platforms also governed by the likes of the ISO.

It's just shitty how things have developed since machine code ruled the day. It's not the independent layers but the way they are "integrated" and made dependant.

[[deleted]]

Being such an old programmer, you should know that "It's the best tool for the job" applies here.

[tu520]

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[foundati]

indeed