racket-android - deploying Racket on Android

This project was funded by Black Swan Learning LLC.

DEPENDENCIES

If you are using an OS X development machine...

• Android SDK 23 with 23.0.2 build tools installed in ~/Library/Android/sdk (the default location that Android Studio puts it in.)

• Android NDK for version 23, compiler version 4.9 installed in ~/Library/Android/sdk/ndk-bundle (default location) (Perhaps we can generalize the build process to use a different one, but it is tested with this one)

If you are using a Debian Linux development machine...

• Android SDK 23 with 23.0.3 build tools installed in /usr/lib/android-sdk (system location from apt-get install google-android-build-tools-23-installer)

• Android NDK for version 23, compiler version 4.9 installed in /usr/lib/android-ndk (system location from apt-get install google-android-ndk-installer)

And also, no matter your development machine...

• A Java JRE/JDK of the 1.8.0-era. (We test with 1.8.0_92.)

• An Android device that supports version 23, uses armeabi, and support OpenGL ES 3. We test with the Google Pixel C.

• A Racket version that supports --enable-ffipoll (6.6 and later)

• The Racket packages, lux, opengl, and mode-lambda. (Run raco pkg install mode-lambda, and accept the installation of the dependencies.)

USAGE

Put the program that you want to run in rkt/app.rkt. It will use rkt/app-csd.rkt for the compiled sprite database.

Run make build_all in the main directory. This will download the current Racket master repository and build a cross-compiled version of it for use on Android. It is essential that this version and the version that racket runs are the same version, because they will share compiled bytecode, so you may want to build this version as second time and put it in your $PATH when working with racket-android.

It will place the appropriate C code into the project directory for use by the Android app. If you run make app, then it will build the Android app and install it to the attached device.

The Android app can be customized in the usual ways by, for instance, modifying project/app/src/main/AndroidManifest.xml (for name and permissions) or project/app/src/main/res (for icons.)

EXAMPLES

Look at rkt/basic.rkt for an example application.

Use make simulate to use the simulator, which provides an interface compatible with the tablet and can be run locally directly from DrRacket/etc. This requires a OpenGL driver that supports most of the features of OpenGL ES 3. (You need to adjust the Racket file, too.)

TODO

• Make 'raco ctool' use gzip for the bytecode to decrease app size.
• Implement some sort of tree-shaking of bytecode to decrease app size.