/mx3

a sample project showcasing/collecting cross platform techniques on mobile

Primary LanguageC++MIT LicenseMIT

libmx3

Build Status Cross platform has been well studied on desktop, but this is an exploration in doing that on mobile and an open request for comments and improvements.

Android

  • run make android to build APK from the command line
  • Example Application is built with Android Studio

The name

"mobile times 3", Android, iOS, and Windows Phone. (todo, windows phone support)

Contributing

There are many ways to contribute to mx3:

  1. new proposals for architecture and techniques
  2. bugfixes
  3. documentation of any kind
  4. new target platforms
  5. educating us about your use case for cross platform mobile

There are a few things laid out in TODO, if you want to contribute but don't know how. If you are building a large feature, please file an issue first to ensure that it aligns with the goals of mx3 - if it does, please submit a Pull Request during development to solicit feedback and enable incremental code review throughout the process.

Requirements

  • python (required for gyp)
  • xcode & xcodebuild
  • android ndk and ndk-build on your PATH to build for android
  • windows phone developer tools (eventually...)

Installation

  1. Run git submodule update --init to download all dependencies
  2. Optionally gem install xcpretty to make the output of xcodebuild nice
  3. Run make play. You should see "Hello, #{your login name}" printed to the console, if so, you seem to already have all the requirements met for building on iOS.
  4. Run make android to build the example android application

Objective-C

Run make play ios or make play mac

Building

Running any of the make commands will automatically download gyp and create .xcodeproj files for each platform.

Build files are generated in build_ios/mx3.xcodeproj, build_mac/mx3.xcodeproj, and GypAndroid.mk but be careful, running make commands again will overwrite any changes you make to these files. If you need to change something, you should be able to do so from common.gypi or mx3.gyp and recompile your buildfiles.

Make targets:

  • clean - clean all generated files
  • make test - run the c++ tests
  • ios, mac - builds a static library for each platform
  • android - build the example app APK
  • make play - to write some quick "playground" style code in objc (see objc/play.m)

Directory structure

  • mx3.gyp - gyp meta-build file for per-target settings
  • common.gypi - a gyp include which defines project wide settings
  • Application.mk - the android make file
  • Makefile - helper for interacting with gyp, and using command line builds (no xcode!!)
  • deps/ - third party dependencies
  • example_mac/ - a external xcodeproj which uses libmx3 ("the client" in a client/server model)
  • include/ - header include paths, no code here
  • objc/ - objc bindings to mx3::Api. Very simple api translation (NSString * -> std::string, lowerCamel -> under_lower, etc.)
  • src/ - the c++ library, there should be no objc/java code here ("the server" in a client/server model)
  • test/ - c++ tests