[racket] compiling Racket to android and ios apps

There is also Clojure on Android, which might be a promising alternative.
http://clojure-android.info/

Justin
On Feb 21, 2015 1:24 PM, "Darren Cruse" <darren.cruse at gmail.com> wrote:

> I could chime in I've also been interesting in Racket for mobile apps.
> Though I've just been learning Racket (and scheme) the last few months take
> what I say with a grain of salt...
>
> Re-reading the OP's post it sounds like you've actually done Racket based
> Phonegap/Cordova apps...  I was going to mention Moby and/or Whalesong but
> it sounds like been there/done that?
>
> Otherwise I too had briefly looked at Lamdbanative as mentioned above.
>
> That was interesting to me as a newbie to Racket and scheme both in seeing
> how much of my Racket learning helped me to follow their code, as well as
> how much does not.  :) i.e. I'm new enough I'm not always appreciating what
> in Racket is standardized and what is not...
>
> Glancing at this example game Lamdbanative includes:
> https://github.com/part-cw/lambdanative/blob/master/apps/uSquish/main.scm
>
> My first reaction was "great I can read this code!" then my second
> reaction was "oh yeah that's right big-bang ain't gonna be here...  hmmm I
> don't see require anywhere I guess modules work differently too ok..."
>
> Which is not to be negative it was just to recognize that gambit scheme
> and lambdanative isn't racket so seemingly wouldn't be able to benefit from
> a lot of Racket modules or it's community etc...
>
> Otherwise did you notice Lambdanative has it's own widget set built atop
> OpenGL - that's how it achieved portability across iOS and Android with the
> same code. But of course those widgets are a tradeoff - depending on what
> you're doing (e.g. a game) they may be fine, but if you really want the
> look and feel of native widgets that's not what you're getting.
>
> Lastly (maybe you know this) Gambit by design is a scheme to C translator
> apparently that's why it was chosen for doing these mobile apps i.e. the
> resulting code is comparable size wise and performance wise to something
> you might have written in C, and obviously C is portable across iOS and
> Android.
>
> I don't really know but I'm guessing porting the Racket VM to operate well
> on iOS and Android is a bigger job than this (i.e. than getting Gambit's C
> code to compile on IOS and Android).  i.e. Maybe that's why there's not a
> better Racket on iOS/Android story already. :)
>
> Chicken scheme uses a similar compile-to-C approach (they call it "Cheney
> on the MTA" you can google it if you're interested).  They seem to have a
> good community too with lots of these packages (they call "eggs").  And I
> know there's at least this one effort to do android native apps with
> Chicken:  https://github.com/chicken-mobile/android-chicken
>
> But in the end I didn't find any perfect answer either.
>
> I came away wishing that somehow Gambit/Lambdanative could be enhanced to
> be Racket compatible...  if only I had a magic wand. :)
>
>
>
>
>
>
>
> On Sat, Feb 21, 2015 at 4:06 AM, Stephen De Gabrielle <
> spdegabrielle at gmail.com> wrote:
>
>> FWIW this project targets both android and IOS:
>> https://github.com/part-cw/lambdanative
>>
>> On Fri, 20 Feb 2015 at 19:32, Jens Axel Søgaard <jensaxel at soegaard.net>
>> wrote:
>>
>>> 2015-02-13 23:08 GMT+01:00 Neil Van Dyke <neil at neilvandyke.org>:
>>> > Anyone have any current/planned projects on compiling Android and iOS
>>> apps
>>> > from Racket?
>>>
>>> > So, as an alternative for smartphone/tablet apps, to keep handy as a
>>> backup
>>> > to HTML5, I'm interested again in the idea of compiling Racket to
>>> native iOS
>>> > and Android apps.  Typical polished commercial-grade apps, so pedagogic
>>> > graphics worlds alone usually aren't enough.
>>>
>>> I'd be interested in helping with iOS apps (writing bindings etc)
>>> provided someone
>>> solves the initial hurdle: getting Racket to cross compile to iOS and
>>> get it
>>> running on an emulator (and later an actual phone/tablet).
>>>
>>> There might be some hints (wrt compiler switches) here:
>>>
>>>     https://github.com/feeley/gambit/blob/master/misc/build-gambit-iOS
>>>
>>> /Jens Axel
>>> ____________________
>>>   Racket Users list:
>>>   http://lists.racket-lang.org/users
>>>
>>
>> ____________________
>>   Racket Users list:
>>   http://lists.racket-lang.org/users
>>
>>
>
> ____________________
>   Racket Users list:
>   http://lists.racket-lang.org/users
>
>
-------------- next part --------------
An HTML attachment was scrubbed...
URL: <http://lists.racket-lang.org/users/archive/attachments/20150221/67679182/attachment-0001.html>