2014-11-12 17:30 GMT+04:00 Wagner, David
Hi,
We are evaluating the pros and cons of using Boost for platform development on Android. We have successfully built and run Asio's "chat" server and client examples on an Android device running Lollipop.
I've been using Boost on Andriod for a long time and can tell you that the major part of Boost libraries work perfectly on Android platforms, even on the ancient ones (like 2.3). I've been doing some work to run all the regression tests on Andriod, see https://github.com/apolukhin/regression_android But unfortunately I had not enough time to finish the work. That repo could be a good point to start with. Running regression tests is essential for a formal support of Android platform. You may also take a look at this thread, it describes the situation with android http://lists.boost.org/Archives/boost/2014/01/210885.php
The C++ support seems to have been greatly improved since KitKat. Even though it is still early to say that all of Boost runs ok, all the Asio unit tests passed with "*** No errors detected" except the multicast test.
I've attached a patch that adds Android makefiles to relevant libraries for compiling Boost.Asio. It's a first draft and it doesn't use the git submodules. The development of this patch has been made on top of the 1.56.0 tag.
Platform development on android is different than native development ("NDK", used for JNI libraries). There seem to have been several efforts made for Boost support on NDK but we haven't found any for platform development (which is aimed at device support, e.g., HAL development, native tools).
Is there an interest for maintaining a set of Android makefiles on vanilla Boost ? I understand someone would need to run the regression tests on Android; is there any other such requirement ?
I'll help you as much as I can, but you have to stick to the current Boost build system, which is Bjam. -- Best regards, Antony Polukhin