Hacker News Board Hacker News, browsed like a classic message board
Live data from Hacker News

RoboVM: Native iOS apps in Java

robovm.org

Post reply on HN
Print view View original

1–10 of 64 posts

Re: RoboVM: Native iOS apps in Java

#4

Post by tluyben2 »

smikhanov wrote: post #2

Did anyone have any experience with this? How mature/stable the project is? Can you expect to successfully port a 10KLoC Objective-C application to it?

Libgdx works with RoboVM now and the results are very nice. For non-game projects I'm curious as well. I'm sticking with Xamarin but I hope there will be more alternatives in non-Objective-C languages.

Re: RoboVM: Native iOS apps in Java

#5

Post by talloaktrees »

I have just finished porting my Android game Superior Tactics (https://play.google.com/store/apps/details?id=org.jrenner.su...) to iOS using RoboVM.

It's amazing to me that I can write my game completely in Java and get a performant AOT compiled version that runs on iOS.

RoboVM really is amazing for indie game devs, and it's open source. I've already donated around $300 to the project.

I've also done tests to see if other JVM languages work with RoboVM. So far, I have been able to get games written in Kotlin running. Can you imagine writing a game in a nice modern JVM language like Kotlin or Scala, and then being able to publish it to PC, Android , HTML5 and iOS? That's what is possible now, and all with open source.

Obviously, for those who develop non-game apps, native UI concerns mean you can't just publish the same thing to both Android and iOS, but for games that isn't an issue.

Re: RoboVM: Native iOS apps in Java

#6

Post by kayoone »

Can anyone compare this to Xamarin in terms of features/stability/workflow ? Xamarin is .NET/C# which is arguably nicer than Java but its also not too cheap if you just want to play around with stuff.

Re: RoboVM: Native iOS apps in Java

#7

Post by puppetmaster3 »

tluyben2 wrote: post #4
smikhanov wrote: post #2

Did anyone have any experience with this? How mature/stable the project is? Can you expect to successfully port a 10KLoC Objective-C application to it?

Libgdx works with RoboVM now and the results are very nice. For non-game projects I'm curious as well. I'm sticking with Xamarin but I hope there will be more alternatives in non-Objective-C languages.

FYI ActionScript works fine.

Re: RoboVM: Native iOS apps in Java

#8

Post by nolok »

talloaktrees wrote: post #5

I have just finished porting my Android game Superior Tactics ( https://play.google.com/store/apps/details?id=org.jrenner.su... ) to iOS using RoboVM. It's amazing to me that I can write my game completely in Java and get a performant AOT compiled version that runs on iOS. RoboVM really is amazing for indie game devs, and it's open source. I've already donated around $300 to the project. I've also done tests to see i…

> native UI concerns mean you can just publish the same thing to both Android and iOS

That's a myth often seen in "deploy everywhere" mobile dev tools, in reality the design habits/guidelines between the two platforms have a lot of difference and you need a separate UI layer for each more often than not.

Doesn't change the awesomeness of RoboVM, but it had to be said.

Re: RoboVM: Native iOS apps in Java

#9

Post by talloaktrees »

nolok wrote: post #8
talloaktrees wrote: post #5

I have just finished porting my Android game Superior Tactics ( https://play.google.com/store/apps/details?id=org.jrenner.su... ) to iOS using RoboVM. It's amazing to me that I can write my game completely in Java and get a performant AOT compiled version that runs on iOS. RoboVM really is amazing for indie game devs, and it's open source. I've already donated around $300 to the project. I've also done tests to see i…

> native UI concerns mean you can just publish the same thing to both Android and iOS That's a myth often seen in "deploy everywhere" mobile dev tools, in reality the design habits/guidelines between the two platforms have a lot of difference and you need a separate UI layer for each more often than not. Doesn't change the awesomeness of RoboVM, but it had to be said.

Sorry, that was actually I a typo on my part, I meant to write "can't"
Post reply on HN