LiveCode Forums

Most operating systems have Java as an afterthought, and native applications written in C (or some similar language) load a Java VM in their own process. Android was designed from the start around the concept of a VM for running applications, and when you open a LiveCode executable, it actually clon...

Some implementation notes On the C side, we could have a class MCJavaExternalProxy which inherits from MCExternal and acts as a go-between for the classic externals interface and the JNI part, so the rest of the engine can be happily ignorant of the fact that the actual implementation is done in Ja...

The recent topic hacking desktop externals for mobile touched on the implementation of Android/Java externals for LiveCode. Now I've been pondering and studying this since the conference, and I promised the other day I'd bundle my thoughts on such an implementation. Base principle: it should feel na...

I vaguely recall using abbreviations in HyperTalk because it made code smaller and parse faster. Back in the late 1980s that still mattered.
But if I see how quickly a complete LiveCode build in Xcode executes on my Mac, I wouldn't lose sleep over it any more

Jan Schenkel.

Well that was embarrassing - and now the debug breakpoint kicks in where I want it to.
Turns out I had a few more mistakes to fix, but your post put the train back on the rails.
Thanks, Mark! Going to add a big red note that all table entries must be in alphabetical order...

Cheers,

Jan Schenkel.

@runrevmark I did extend the switch structure in newobj.cpp - as a copy+paste+adapt artist I slavishly followed your example ;-) Anyway, I pushed it to an experiment branch here https://github.com/quartamsoftware/livecode/tree/experiment-tinker_command Just in case anybody wants to take a look and ...

Looks like I have gdb and it's running as soon as I launch LiveCode from within Xcode. Here's the beginning of the Xcode console output: GNU gdb 6.3.50-20050815 (Apple version gdb-1824) (Wed Feb 6 22:51:23 UTC 2013) Copyright 2004 Free Software Foundation, Inc. GDB is free software, covered by the G...

I haven't taken that part of the code apart yet, but I do know how easy it is to 'mangle' JNI memory management. If you're not careful, the C-side may prevent an object from getting garbage collected, or the C-side may think it has a hold of an object method but the JVM has moved it behind its back....

Maybe we could provide Oxford-dictionary synonyms in the language? *ducks*

Jan Schenkel.

The idea is that you wouldn't have to instantiate the object yourself; the engine automatically finds all implementations of the 'com.runrev.livecode.external.ExternalLibrary' interface at startup, instantiates them and makes appropriately annotated methods available as externalCommands/externalFunc...

Hi guys, While working on the filter enhancements, I ran into problems where the IDE decided to not start completely - I guess because it uses the 'filter' command extensively and I screwed the pooch :-( So I decided to test my work by adding a 'tinker' command and putting the code into it. I follow...

There is no requirement for static linking on Android, and all .dex files in the .apk package are automatically put on the classpath. All you need is a very thin layer of JNI and reflection to be added to the engine. Even simpler if we could move to Android 2.3 as minimum. And I too wish we had a si...

Ah, but there's the rub: people want to tap straight into Java externals, not build C externals as a gateway to Java functions. And Java developers rarely like the idea of writing their own JNI calls. A few annotations should be enough and the system has to figure out the rest. While I do have a pre...

Ah, yes - Android externals. *oops*
I've been pondering that since the conference, but got a bit distracted by the filter enhancements.
Give me a few more days to write up a proposal...

Jan Schenkel.

Ah, oops, that manual goes beyond adding older SDKs to Xcode, straight into the realm of building your own version of LiveCode Community. In your case, you don't have to go beyond the 'Now cleanup' section. I'm not an expert on iOS deployment, but LiveCode won't generate Xcode projects; rather, it l...