net? monodroid does
DESCRIPTION
Introduction to MonoDroidTRANSCRIPT
.NET? Mono for Android Does
Kevin McMahon
@klmcmahon
http://blog.kevfoo.com
Overview
• Overview of Android
• Mono for Android : What, How, Why
• Code Demo
• Mono for Android Resources
What is Android?
• Application Framework
• Dalvik Virtual Machine
• Optimized OpenGL ES 1.0 graphics library
• Customized Linux 2.6 kernel
• Rich development environment
Android Stack
Android Stack
Android Stack
Android Stack
Android Stack
Dalvik Virtual Machine
• Dalvik Virtual Machine– Register-based– Runs multiple VMs efficiently– Requires a .class to .dex transformation– JIT (as of Android 2.2)
• Each Android Application:– Runs in their own process – Runs on their own VM
What is Mono for Android?
• Commercial Product from Novell– $399 individual / ~$999 enterprise / ~$99 student
• Windows and Mac OS X (Linux soon)• Open preview– DOWNLOAD AND TRY IT!
• Project is getting really close to 1.0– No “Go Live” license yet– Not done with optimizations– Still changing the API
How Does it Work?
• Mono Runtime– Native to the device– Executes .Net code– Runs side-by-side with Dalvik
• Mono to Android Communication– Java proxies• Android Callable Wrappers • Managed Callable Wrappers
Mono for Android Architecture
Mono for Android Design Principles
• Follow the Framework Design Guidelines
• Allow developers to subclass any Java class
• C# delegates (lambdas, anonymous methods)
• Java properties as C# properties
• Strongly typed API
Why use Mono for Android?
• Mono for Android story not as compelling as MonoTouch.– GC, decent IDE, not Objective-C
• Opportunities for re-use across platforms– iOS, Android, Windows Phone 7 non-UI components– MonoGame which is a port of XNA
• Development tooling and environment– Visual Studio– MonoDevelop
• C# > Java– Friction still due to Java idioms and architecture.
Deployment Options
• Deploy to Android Virtual Device
• Deploy to Device
• Debug capabilities on both
• Sell (eventually)
– Android Marketplace
– Amazon App Store
Android Application Concepts
• Activities
• Services
• Content Providers
• Intents
• Resources
Activities
• Orchestrates a UI view• Applications are composed of 1-to-Many
activities
• One activity marked as main and shown first upon launch
Activities - Views
• Each activity is given a default window to draw in.
• Content of the window is provided by a hierarchy of views
• A view hierarchy is placed within an activity's window by the Activity.SetContentView()
Activity Life Cycle
• onCreate• onStart• onResume• onPause• onStop• onDestroy
Services
• Android service are what you’d expect.• Possible to bind to an ongoing service and
communicate via exposed interface• Runs in main application process but doesn’t
block other components or UI
Content Providers
• Queryable application data stores• Only way to share data amongst other apps• Android ships with common providers– Audio, video, images, contacts, etc.
• Making your application’s data public– Create a new provider– Add your data to existing provider
Content Provider Layer
Applications
Content Providers
Contacts Music Video
sPictur
es …
Intents
• Eventing mechanism• Intent objects are passive data that is of
interest to the component that is receiving the intent
• Filterable
Resources
• Images, layout descriptions, binary blobs and string
dictionaries
• Abstraction layer which helps decouples code
• Makes managing assets easier
– Localization
– Multiple displays
– Different hardware configurations
Mono for Android Resources
Download the Preview!• http://mono-android.net/Welcome
Links• http://www.mono-android.net• http://developer.android.com/
IRC Support / Discussion• #monodroid on irc.gnome.org
Code• https://github.com/mono/monodroid-samples• https://github.com/kevinmcmahon/MonoDroid101