mx3: A C++ repository from odemiral

libmx3

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.

The name

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

Learning

Mobile C++ Slack instance!
UIKonf 2014
CppCon 2014 - A Deep Dive Into Two Cross-Platform Mobile Apps Written in C++
CppCon 2014 - Practical Cross-Platform Mobile C++ Development
CppCon 2014 - Microsoft w/ C++ to Deliver Office Across Different Platforms, Part II
Google Inbox
JVM at Google
Know of a good resource? put up a PR to add it!

Tools of the Trade

djinni (pronounced genie) a tool which generates interface bindings from Java -> C++ and ObjC -> C++
gyp a meta-build system used to generate native project files across platforms
cmake (not used in this project) an alternative to gyp
gradle build automation
json11 a minimalist C++11 library for json serialization
optional a reference implementation of std::experimental::optional
juce cross platform C++ toolkit (not used here)
j2objc (not used in this project)
xamarin (not used in the project)
Visual Studio's cross platform mobile support and a related video
Know of a tool? put up a PR to add it!

Contributing

There are many ways to contribute to mx3:

new proposals for architecture and techniques
bugfixes
documentation of any kind
new target platforms
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...)
Configure the paths to your Android SDK and Android NDK by creating a file using the template at example_android/local.properties.example.

Installation

Run git submodule update --init to download all dependencies
Optionally gem install xcpretty to make the output of xcodebuild nice
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.
Run make android to build the example android application.

Objective-C

Run make play ios or make play mac

Android

Be sure to create a example_android/local.properties file pointing to the android-ndk and android-sdk.

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

├── Application.mk # the android make file
├── Makefile # helper for interacting with gyp, and using command line builds (no xcode!!)
├── android/ # Java bindings to mx3::Api
├── common.gypi # a gyp include which defines project wide settings
├── deps/ # third party dependencies
├── example_android/ # the Android example project
├── example_ios/ # an external xcodeproj which uses libmx3 ("the client" in a client/server model)
├── include/ # header include paths, no code here
├── mx3.gyp # gyp meta-build file for per-target settings
├── 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

odemiral/mx3