lmemsm

Was recently commenting on a forum about how few Open Source alternatives there are for Android devices. The Free Software Foundation even had a wiki page about how development for mobile devices was a priority. However, when I wrote to them on the subject, they didn't bother to acknowledge or answer my e-mail (until just recently, two years later).

There are some good Open Source projects out there for Android. However, many commercial apps and even the Open Source applications appear to be trying to reinvent the wheel. They're redeveloping concepts that have already been done in other languages and with other build systems. Worse yet, they're making a lot of the same programming mistakes of earlier projects without learning from them.

I truly believe that taste varies widely as far as what people like in a program or application. To one person, an expensive commercial office suite or graphics program is a highly necessary tool. To someone else, it's too complicated and tries to do too much at once. What one person feels is a compelling, action-packed and exciting video game can be boring and mindless to another person. With that said, I'm sure my taste in programs does not match what many others are looking for. Personally, I do find the Open Source applications I ported from other operating systems to Android to be among my favorite Android apps. I'd love to find to locate other projects that are working on similar ports of popular Open Source applications.

Since I'm primarily interested in C/C++ development at this time and I've always been an advocate of cross-platform programming, I've been searching for good references and examples of C/C++ application development for Android that do not lock the developer into using a specific IDE or build system. Most books on Android development are for Java or Kotlin. There are even a good number that use web apps or web development languages likes JavaScript/HTML/CSS including projects like PhoneGap, ReactNative, NativeScript, etc.

There are very few books on NDK development for Android. All of the books I've found so far detail development with Android Studio (or Eclipse for older books that have not been updated in a while). SDL is typically mentioned with NDK development even though there are other development libraries that work with Android. Some don't mention libraries like SDL at all, but then you're limited to examples similar to those provided by Google or very basic applications. There are a few interesting articles on porting applications from other operating systems to mobile devices, but I've found no books that specialize or give much in the way of advice in this area.

I've been considering writing an e-book that fills in the gaps and gives examples of how to develop cross-platform applications that easily port to Android and use NDK plus a more a standard tool-chain. The only thing holding me back is the idea that there would probably be very few developers other than myself interested in this sort of thing. Obviously groups like the FSF weren't interested or they would have taken the time to answer an e-mail. If there is interest from other developers on sharing this type of information, please let me know.

I mentioned on a forum how much I'd like to see a list of available Open Source applications for Android (preferably cross-platform portable applications written in languages other than Java). It would be nice to see what others have done and get ideas for development based on them. Since I really haven't been able to find a resource like that, I'm putting together the start of such a resource here:

C/C++ SDL based apps ported to Android:
https://github.com/pelya/commandergenius
https://sourceforge.net/projects/libsdl-android/files/apk/
Terminal emulator in Java and cli and ncurses based applications ported from other systems:
https://github.com/termux/termux-packages/tree/master/packages
VLC for Android:
https://www.videolan.org/vlc/download-android.html
List of Open Source Android applications. Includes information on language the program was written in. While there aren't a lot of C/C++ applications listed there are some:
https://github.com/pcqpcq/open-source-android-apps
Similar list for iOS Apps:
https://github.com/dkhamsing/open-source-ios-apps
Another list of Open Source applications (unfortunately no indication of the languages they were written in or the build systems required):
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_free_and_open-source_Android_applications
Project for mobile devices (mainly Qt based):
https://ubports.com/
Repository and app store for Open Source apps (mainly Java apps):
https://f-droid.org/en/about/
CrystaX NDK provides and alternative to Google's NDK:
https://www.crystax.net/android/ndk

If you know of other Open Source C/C++ software for Android, please advise and I'll add it to the list.


Here are a couple of interesting articles on Android. The first is a list of alternatives to Google's online app store for Android:
https://android.izzysoft.de/articles/named/android_markets_safe_to_use
The next article is about how to make Android a little more Open Source friendly by stripping it of some of the more proprietary apps:
https://android.izzysoft.de/articles/named/android-without-google-5

Another site with information on removing proprietary libraries from Android devices:
https://microg.org/