Slashdot Mirror
Android Ported To C#
New submitter Eirenarch writes "Xamarin has just announced that they got the Java part of Android ported to C# via machine translation. The resulting OS, called XobotOS, is available on Github. They claim some serious performance gains over Dalvik. For them, this is an experiment that they are not planning to focus on, but they will be using some of the technologies in Mono for Android."
....this still won't save you from the Oracle software apocalypse.
1. The Microsoft patent grant for C# is more permissive than the patent grant for Java.
2. Oracle is suing Google over Java right now..
Android was ported to x86 a few versions ago.
---- Booth was a patriot ----
Yes, you can. There are two ways to go about it:
Download the Android SDK which contains an Android emulator.
If you have any virtualization software installed, grab an Android x86 ISO image and run it in a VM.
The second method gets you higher performance (virtualization vs binary translation), but has major compatibility issues. Any app that contains ARM native code won't work in Android x86 unfortunately.
The order of the battle has already been decided. Oracle is the mini boss and Microsoft is the last boss.
Microsoft is a bigger, more evil giant than even Oracle.
I'm not entirely sure you've ever dealt with Oracle...
I can already tell you how that will turn out: Microsoft won't be suing anyone.
C# and the core runtime are ECMA standards with strong patent promises, meaning Microsoft explicitly gives everyone in the world the right to implement their own C# compiler and version of the System.* libraries.
Their open-ness with regard to the CLR and C# is far and away better than Sun did with Java. They even contributed DLR code to mono itself.
Not to mention how much better the language is... With real co/contra variant generics (type erasure? GTFU), first-class functions with delegates, closures, lambda expressions, and LINQ. Plus the new async/await stuff. On and type inference just makes things easier on a day to day coding basis.
Meanwhile Java has spent the last 10 years standing still. They couldn't even get closures into the latest release and from my understanding of the docs they aren't going to do true first-class closures anyway. It's a freakin joke of a language at this point.
Natural != (nontoxic || beneficial)
Bigger? Perhaps. More evil? Not a chance in hell.
Hash? I though it was a bunch of pluses squished together to save space. You're saying C# isn't C++++?
Wow, my mind's blown. Cue Lemmings' self-destruct animation: Grabs head and explodes!
Microsoft is a bigger, more evil giant than even Oracle.
I'm not entirely sure you've ever dealt with Oracle...
Oracle vs Google is like "do no good" vs "do no evil".
Having dealt with both I can say Oracle is much more evil than Microsoft.
Any insufficiently advanced magic is indistinguishable from technology.
So the fact that Oracle has sued someone over their language while Microsoft hasn't doesn't matter, it's still Microsoft that is more evil.
I mean, what exactly does matter, then?
That's Dalvik, NOT the JVM.
That's Dalvik, NOT the JVM.
Whoops, you are correct. Sorry about that.
I wish I could go back and edit the post. Oh well.
steveha
lf(1): it's like ls(1) but sorts filenames by extension, tersely
The (irrevocable, legally binding) promise Microsoft made was not just related to C#, but the .NET framework. So long as it's implemented properly (eg. all elements Microsoft deems "required" for the implementation is implemented), Microsoft will not peruse any legal action on anyone using the technology. That includes the API. The reason Microsoft did this was so people would not be afraid to use it. They want people to use it.
The two situations are not comparable at all. Microsoft would not sue over someone implementing the API.