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Rawdrawandroid – Build Android apps without any Java, in C and Make

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Re: Rawdrawandroid – Build Android apps without any Java, in C and Make

#121

Post by kaba0 »

ktosobcy wrote: post #114
kaba0 wrote: post #112

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Maven is virtually infinite extensibility via plugins Losing the only task of a build tool, caching and parallelization. No, the problem is that maven doesn’t rebuild everything. It is actually quite common in code bases that I had to run clean build instead of build to actually recompile everything that changed. I guess maven just doesn’t have an accurate build graph? > LOL, from my experience that is not true In…

> Losing the only task of a build tool, caching and parallelization. You are aware that Maven does offer paralle build, right? > I guess maven just doesn’t have an accurate build graph? You guess wrong? then >> LOL, from my experience that is not true > In what way is it not true? Consistency of gradle build. You yourself stated just a paragraph above that sometimes you have to run "clean" xD > Also, gradle is demons…

> Consistency of gradle build. You yourself stated just a paragraph above that sometimes you have to run "clean" xD

That was in reference to maven..

Also, feel free to show me any benchmark showing maven being as fast as gradle. https://gradle.org/gradle-vs-maven-performance/

Re: Rawdrawandroid – Build Android apps without any Java, in C and Make

#122

Post by helpfulContrib »

_bin_ wrote: post #2

This is pretty great. The biggest reason I hate doing android development is the java (and to a lesser extent, kotlin) "ecosystem" is a pain. Java is a sucky language to write; Kotlin is less bad, but the whole build tooling/package management/IDE mania mess is still a hassle to use. So thanks to the author.

[dead]

Re: Rawdrawandroid – Build Android apps without any Java, in C and Make

#123

Post by tapirl »

sheeshkebab wrote: post #37

Honestly the whole java/kotlin tooling is the worst to pick for mobile dev, and KEEP it after so many other great languages and tools that are out there. I don’t why google didn’t offer at least Go as a native alternative for android dev.

Google even didn't consider supporting Go as an official flutter language.

Re: Rawdrawandroid – Build Android apps without any Java, in C and Make

#124

Post by codethief »

mdhb wrote: post #64
promiseofbeans wrote: post #63

Whenever I need to touch XCode or Android Studio, I'm reminded how lucky web devs are now that almost everything has converged around Vite (death stare at NextJS). Everything Just Works(tm). Simple plugin system to integrate anything. The few times there wasn't a plugin to do what I needed, I've managed to roll a custom one pretty easily. When Vite breaks you're completely screwed though. Find a different way to do i…

I sincerely Vite would just align with actual web standards rather than throwing in bits and pieces of their own nonsense. It’s precisely why it tends to break in seemingly unfixable ways

Would you mind elaborating?

Re: Rawdrawandroid – Build Android apps without any Java, in C and Make

#125

Post by codethief »

kopirgan wrote: post #62

May be someone with deep pockets like Elon must get Linux to work on mobile. I know there's efforts going on but seems slow progress. That will break the back of the duopoly and also make things like this so much easier.

(I assume by "Linux" you mean a distribution like Arch/Debian/Fedora/Ubuntu/… since, as the sibling says, Android also runs Linux.)

> That will break the back of the duopoly and also make things like this so much easier.

…and so much less secure by giving every application access to everything in my home dir. No, thank you.

Re: Rawdrawandroid – Build Android apps without any Java, in C and Make

#126

Post by RunSet »

nine_k wrote: post #13

Now we only need to embed Lua into this to write the high-level logic, and we may have a winner for stuff that does not need a lot of accessibility support. Like, say, games, or media players. Easy to link C libraries that do performance-critical stuff, or writhe your own C code. (Then gradually rewrite the core in Zig.)

SDL can be used to provide something similar to what you describe.

https://github.com/libsdl-org/SDL/blob/main/docs/README-andr...

Re: Rawdrawandroid – Build Android apps without any Java, in C and Make

#127

Post by pjmlp »

metadat wrote: post #48
tredre3 wrote: post #5

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I can tolerate Java and Kotlin, but the tooling is just awful *. I've stopped counting how many times I came back to an Android project after only a few months, only to have Android Studio force me to update Gradle and dependencies and whatnot, and break everything. * Of course one could blame me for not learning the ins and outs of the build system!

This is why folks should stick with Maven and live a happy, generally drama-free life. As a Gradle veteran, I've written in detail about this previously: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=38875936 TL;DR: Gradle is too powerful (which is fun and seems valuable at first!) with too many footguns. Combine this with the mandatory update migrations and you're literally signing up for future pain compared to using a lowe…

Gradle was created by folks that didn't learn the Ant lesson, and only matters thanks to Android.

Had it not been for Android replacing Ant with Gradle, and most folks wouldn't even remember Gradle.

Re: Rawdrawandroid – Build Android apps without any Java, in C and Make

#128

Post by pjmlp »

kaba0 wrote: post #92
ktosobcy wrote: post #86

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Eh... "all hail Gradle" :/ Each time I have to touch it, it results in problems... Oh, you updated JDK? Gradle won't work. There is new Gradle? Tough luck it will break your build.. And with Maven it can update and the build keeps working just fine. To that end I mostly ignore prompt "update gradle!" in Android Studio to avoid any issues...

Maven (and pretty much every other build tool with the exception of bazel) is not capable enough for such a complex build as is required for android, though. E.g. maven can often “lose” that something requires a rebuild, and only clean build will produce the correct artifacts. Gradle can always keeps track of tasks correctly.

Android team marketing.

Almost no other build tool has had so many conference talks regarding performance issues, and dealing with its gotchas as Gradle.

Re: Rawdrawandroid – Build Android apps without any Java, in C and Make

#129

Post by John_Cena »

yazzku wrote: post #50
wiseowise wrote: post #28

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> It would be silly to write low-level software in Java Depends on what kind of low-level stuff.

No, it doesn't. Java is a piece of crap with JVMs imposing an 8-24 byte overhead per object, which destroys caching, memory footprint, and any chance of low-level optimization. Not only is the overhead bad, it's implementation-dependent, i.e. unpredictable. That, along with lacking SIMD, imposing stupid decisions like bounds checks on all array accesses, making arrays boxed (int[] is not an array of ints, sorry), or…

I feel so out of place when interviewing for firmware/embedded roles and the interviewers turn out to be java snobs. I honestly still have a hard time comprehending the situation; how does it come to this? Thanks for your insight

Re: Rawdrawandroid – Build Android apps without any Java, in C and Make

#130

Post by kaba0 »

pjmlp wrote: post #128
kaba0 wrote: post #92

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Maven (and pretty much every other build tool with the exception of bazel) is not capable enough for such a complex build as is required for android, though. E.g. maven can often “lose” that something requires a rebuild, and only clean build will produce the correct artifacts. Gradle can always keeps track of tasks correctly.

Android team marketing. Almost no other build tool has had so many conference talks regarding performance issues, and dealing with its gotchas as Gradle.

I am primarily a backend developer, so nope. Also, give me any build tool that would be similarly capable. I only know of Bazel.
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