RoboVM: Native iOS apps in Java

http://www.robovm.org/?

by tilt • 12 years ago

148 62 12 years ago

smikhanov• 12 years ago

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?

tluyben23• 12 years ago

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.

puppetmaster3• 12 years ago

FYI ActionScript works fine.

SifJar• 12 years ago

It says right on the homepage "no virtual machine involved". So why is "VM" in the name? Surely that's just misleading?

joeblau• 12 years ago

Maybe VM stands for Very Magical?

pjmlp• 12 years ago

Maybe because they use LLVM for code generation?

But you are right, this VM <=> memory safe languages, has done more harm than good, making a whole generation think you require a VM for memory safe compilers.

ntherning4• 12 years ago

Thanks for pointing this out. I have now changed this to just "No interpreter involved". Except for not interpreting or JITing bytecode it's indeed very much a VM. E.g. it presents the same memory model and threading model to the running app as a desktop JVM would.

talloaktrees2• 12 years ago

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.

nolok• 12 years ago

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.

talloaktrees2• 12 years ago

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

briantakita• 12 years ago

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

Phonegap is a great tool for writing code once (html5 & javascript) & deploying to many platforms with native capabilities.

I suspect it's not quite there for games, however it has great performance for most CRUD apps.

---

Re: RoboVM, I suspect there will be libraries that will properly use iOS-like UI. Some logic branches will be required, however the main flow is centralized and DRY.

---

There's also cross platform, openGL based tools. If you are making an openGL game, you minimize your need to use the native UI.

http://coronalabs.com/products/corona-sdk/

bsaul• 12 years ago

I'm curious : what parts of your game code were you able to reuse on the ios version ( apart from obvious things such as the game logic itself) ? Network ? Opengl libs ? Sound libs ?

philbarr• 12 years ago

RoboVM create bindings for most of the iOS API, and there are also bindings being created for 3rd party libs [0]. LibGDX [1] have done their own too.

I created a game [2] in LibGDX for Android, set it up on the Mac, right clicked and it just worked. Not deployed to the app store yet but I will be doing.

I just released my latest Augmented Reality "game" [3] on Google Play which uses Vuforia [4] for the AR, and am in the process of writing the RoboVM bindings for it. Once I've finished that I'll submit it back to robovm-ios-bindings so you should be able to write AR apps for iOS and Android at the same time.

[0] https://github.com/BlueRiverInteractive/robovm-ios-bindings

[1] http://libgdx.badlogicgames.com/

[2] https://play.google.com/store/apps/details?id=com.simplyappe...

[3] https://play.google.com/store/apps/details?id=com.simplyappe...

[4] https://developer.vuforia.com/

djur• 12 years ago

What are you using for a game framework? libgdx?

cookerware5• 12 years ago

what tools did you use to create your game assets?

kayoone• 12 years ago

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.

yulaow• 12 years ago

Also, I want to understand how its creator monetarize this? Or it is just a no-profit project?

Anyway I'm happy to see competion against xamarin. Now I only want also a javascript to native (and not just webview-running) for any platform

troymc• 12 years ago

If you browse the RoboVM website, you'll find that you can (or will soon be able to) buy a support subscription.

As for a JavaScript to native compiler, check out Appcelerator Hyperloop [1]. It's currently experimental.

[1] https://github.com/appcelerator/hyperloop

tluyben23• 12 years ago

It's unsure what is going to happen after the MS takeover though. I keep hoping for MS being nice for a bit :) What would we be without hope...

taspeotis2• 12 years ago

MS takeover [citation needed]

taspeotis2• 12 years ago

Xamarin is ... not too cheap if you just want to play around with stuff.

If you just want to play around then take note that the starter plans are free [1].

[1] https://store.xamarin.com/

hippiehippo• 12 years ago

Is a Mac needed in order to compile?

CervezaPorFavor• 12 years ago

Yes. It's stated in the "Get Started" section.

jevinskie4• 12 years ago

You may be able to get it to work on other systems if you copy / port some of the necessary Apple bits. You'd have to copy the iOS SDKs from Xcode and get ld64 [0] / codesign [1] (both open source) to build on non-Mac machines. Perhaps some resource file prep tools as well. Then you could use libimobiledevice [2] and friends to push apps to the phone and debug them.

[0] http://www.opensource.apple.com/source/ld64/ld64-136/ (unfortunately the last source release is from Xcode 4.6, 2 releases behind current)

[1] http://www.opensource.apple.com/source/security_systemkeycha...

[2] http://www.libimobiledevice.org/

cookerware5• 12 years ago

is there a tutorial on this? The biggest hurdle to making iOS app is that you need a physical hardware from them.

ntherning4• 12 years ago

For now you'll need Xcode to use RoboVM which implies Mac OS X running on Mac hardware or in a VM (it can be done although Apple doesn't allow it unless you run the VM on Mac hardware).

michaelsbradley• 12 years ago

lein-fruit facilitates usage of Clojure with RoboVM:

https://github.com/oakes/lein-fruit

valevk• 12 years ago

Doesn't Apple's ToS prohibit writing apps in any language other than Objective-C? Or using other than Apple's tools?

protomyth• 12 years ago

No they do not

fidotron• 12 years ago

No, a lot of games are C# (Unity) or Lua (Corona).

The thing they are understandably hissy about is downloading new scripts off the net and executing those, and they want to be sure that when they test something it's 100% representative of what the consumer experiences. (This gets really damn fuzzy when people want to do A-B testing in iOS apps). Not sure of the state of the fine print these days, but it's like many of these things where if you understand why they do it (not necessarily agree with it) it's not too hard to work within that framework. As a consequence if you even look like you might be executing arbitrary code they might reject you.

bjustin• 12 years ago

The app store agreement did at one point. It hasn't for a while now.

pudquick• 12 years ago

No.

They prohibit on-device dynamic native code generation (ie. no JIT and no interpreters that attempt to mark memory as executable).

They also (generally) prohibit interpreters that download code from the network and execute it.

If you're doing a workflow like: non-ObjC language -> llvm -> native code, Apple has no problem with that generally (currently).

They just want to make sure that the executable code that ships in your iOS app is all they have to worry about, that it can't generate access to system libraries/routines that were not present when submitted to them.

This is why things like Pythonista and LuaBox are in the store currently, in addition to many apps written in other languages with other IDEs (Xamarin, etc.)

jevinskie4• 12 years ago

Yep. These are the relevant lines from the policy:

2.7 Apps that download code in any way or form will be rejected 2.8 Apps that install or launch other executable code will be rejected

And I suppose this covers use of W^X / mprotect:

2.5 Apps that use non-public APIs will be rejected

teacup503• 12 years ago

It used to. They changed it, fortunately.

cookerware5• 12 years ago

holy crap!

I've avoided iOS because Objective-C scared me and I stuck to Android. I have some pending questions before I use this however.

1) How much code share can there be between Android and iOS? Is it just limited to business logic like Xamarin?

2) Can you use an Android game engine, create the game in Android and build for iOS?

3) In order to create and run iOS simulator, do you need to be on the mac and have Xcode? Any way to do it on a non-Mac machine?

4) Can you use RoboVM to create Android and iOS at the same time?

Amazing stuff!

matt_heimer• 12 years ago

He is using LibGDX and pretty much everything in most games developed with LibGDX run on all platforms (iOS, Android, Desktop Java). Most LibGDX games will work in a web browser too (converts to GWT + WebGL). A couple native extensions like some of the freetype stuff won't work in the web environment.

You can write the game on Windows if you want but to compile and test the iOS build you need a Mac with Xcode.

Almost all your game development is done is a project that is shared by all the platforms. During development you typically test the Java desktop version so you don't have to deal with deploying to devices or slow emulators.

Honestly the biggest pain is when you start doing ads or game center type stuff that is platform specific but there are ways to work around that.

gdubs• 12 years ago

Java experts: would this make Clojure a potentially valid development option now for iOS?

revscat• 12 years ago

It says that it takes Java byte code and translates it to native ARM or x86 code. Since Closure is a JVM language, then yes, it would be possible to do so.

I'm worried Scala would get implemented first, though. :)

teacup503• 12 years ago

Scala already works as-is. I'm sure clojure does as well.

jonnybgood• 12 years ago

Yes. This link was already posted in the thread but here it is again.

https://github.com/oakes/lein-fruit

trhtrhth• 12 years ago

Any JVM language.

abalone• 12 years ago

There goes the neighborhood.

Kidding.. anyone know how this compares to Titanium? E.g. performance, energy efficiency, debuggability, etc.? http://www.appcelerator.com/titanium/

gary4gar• 12 years ago

   Print the CLA, sign it and scan it (or use a camera to photograph it) and e-mail it to hello(at)robovm.com. Include your GitHub user name in the e-mail.

print & scan in 21st century...really?

Moto7451• 12 years ago

A bit wacky indeed. For what it's worth when dealing with this stuff I use Apple's Preview App's signature feature. It's pretty neat. You take a photo of your signature with your webcam and place/resize it as necessary. I create a new signature each time (paranoia) but if you have to do this a lot you can have Preview save it for later.

heavenlyhash4• 12 years ago

I've successfully used RoboVM to ship native linux binaries from jvm bytecode, in addition to the headlining cross-platform-mobile features. It's fantastic. It worked pretty much out-of-box with a few commands from the Getting Started page.

And as for performance: startup time is impressive: an order of magnitude faster than launching a jar in the jvm, such that you can actually use it in the middle of other shell scripts without blinking. Once it's been running for a while, it's hard to beat the kind of optimizations a JIT compiler can do, but RoboVM is still approximately as fast as java (I think the mailing list handwaves this to about 2x slower; still a couple hundred times faster than most interpreted languages, so I'm pretty okay with this).

RoboVM uses the Boehm GC, which is mature, effective, and (of critical note to me) a heap-compacting garbage collector... which means you can confidently use it even for applications with days or months of contiguous uptime.

I've thrown wicked strange bytecode at RoboVM. It copes fine; I was impressed. (After some time working in golang gave me a great appreciation for the semantic style of goroutines, I've been trying to bring them everywhere. I made some custom bytecode with code derived from the Apache JavaFlow library to try to break RoboVM, and it didn't even blink; I'm now using it with http://paralleluniverse.co/quasar/ very happily.)

And did I mention how pleasant it is to ship statically linked native executables?

yoklov• 12 years ago

I'm pretty sure the Boehm GC isn't heap compacting.

It at least didn't used to be, and if it is it works in some way I cannot fathom, as I'm not sure how you can compact the heap without changing the value of pointers, which the Boehm GC cannot do safely.

That said it's still a very good GC and you should be fine. (It does try to minimize fragmentation in other ways, but nothing is as effective as heap compacting.)

heavenlyhash4• 12 years ago

Niklas (the RoboVM lead dev) talked briefly about how the GC is used on the list here: https://groups.google.com/d/msg/robovm/etAxWMYvRTU/huXKmPA-J...

If I understand correctly, when used in "precise" mode, the Boehm GC is capable of compacting. Mono north of version 2.8 also claims to be heap compacting by virtue of Boehm in precise mode.

e12e2• 12 years ago

Hm, seems documentation for for targeting Linux as a build target is missing? Or am I just looking in the wrong place?

spullara• 12 years ago

I was wondering the same thing.

heavenlyhash4• 12 years ago

Perhaps the docs don't highlight it enough, but I think you should find what you're looking for under http://www.robovm.com/docs#using-the-command-line-tool

It's actually what you get when building on linux with no special args: the default behavior is to produce a binary for the current operating system and architecture.

Thereafter, if you want to get fancier and target other specific systems, there are options for "-os", "-arch", and "-cpu"; you can find some description of them in the default usage help message from running `robovm` with no commands.

ballard2• 12 years ago

Has anyone used RubyMotion and RoboVM?

ballard2• 12 years ago

Just in case anyone is wondering, it is possible to compile Java to native code without a VM. I had to write a Java to MIPS compiler in uni, once in C++ and again in Java. Painful and hard without the luxury of LLVM but doable.

RoboVM: Native iOS apps in Java

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