[Caml-list] Android/iOS apps with OCaml

[Caml-list] Android/iOS apps with OCaml

[Dario Teixeira]

Dear fellow OCamlers,

I'm wondering about the current routes for developing cross-platform
apps for Android and iOS using OCaml.  The only one that occurs to
me is using Apache Cordova together with js_of_ocaml and perhaps
OCaml-Cordova.

Anyway, I would be much obliged if you would share your experiences
with this route or any other OCaml-based routes.  I'm particularly
interested to know whether the approach is production-ready and
recommended or if I should consider something altogether different.

Thanks in advance for your time!
Best regards,
Dario Teixeira

Re: [Caml-list] Android/iOS apps with OCaml

[Sébastien Hinderer]

Dear Dario,

Making it possible (easier) to cross-compile OCaml programs is one of
the outcomes the work I am doing with Gallium (the team developping
OCaml at Inria) is supposed to have. I am not sure yet how this can
impact the production of Android apps, but as far as iOS apps are
concerned, one thing I am supposed to work on is the integration of
Gerd's pull request (can someone find the number?) which has been stored
in the ios-support branch of the OCaml repository on GitHub.

This should make it possible to cross-compile OCaml programs which can
then be executed on iOS devices.

One other question will then be whether such programs can somehow use
all the application frameworks provided by Apple.

Regarding Android I don't know how helpful OCamljava could be but it
might be worth investigating.

Sébastien.

Re: [Caml-list] Android/iOS apps with OCaml

[Francois BERENGER]

On 11/24/2016 06:10 PM, Sébastien Hinderer wrote:
> Dear Dario,
> 
> Making it possible (easier) to cross-compile OCaml programs is one of
> the outcomes the work I am doing with Gallium (the team developping
> OCaml at Inria) is supposed to have. I am not sure yet how this can
> impact the production of Android apps, but as far as iOS apps are
> concerned, one thing I am supposed to work on is the integration of
> Gerd's pull request (can someone find the number?)

Maybe this one:
https://github.com/ocaml/ocaml/pull/182

> which has been stored
> in the ios-support branch of the OCaml repository on GitHub.
> 
> This should make it possible to cross-compile OCaml programs which can
> then be executed on iOS devices.
> 
> One other question will then be whether such programs can somehow use
> all the application frameworks provided by Apple.
> 
> Regarding Android I don't know how helpful OCamljava could be but it
> might be worth investigating.
> 
> Sébastien.
> 
> 
> 

-- 
Regards,
Francois.
"When in doubt, use more types"

Re: [Caml-list] Android/iOS apps with OCaml

[Sébastien Hinderer]

Francois BERENGER (2016/11/25 09:55 +0100):
> On 11/24/2016 06:10 PM, Sébastien Hinderer wrote:
> > Dear Dario,
> > 
> > Making it possible (easier) to cross-compile OCaml programs is one of
> > the outcomes the work I am doing with Gallium (the team developping
> > OCaml at Inria) is supposed to have. I am not sure yet how this can
> > impact the production of Android apps, but as far as iOS apps are
> > concerned, one thing I am supposed to work on is the integration of
> > Gerd's pull request (can someone find the number?)
> 
> Maybe this one:
> https://github.com/ocaml/ocaml/pull/182

Yes, exactly. Thanks a lot François!

Sébastien.

Re: [Caml-list] Android/iOS apps with OCaml

[Dario Teixeira]

Hi,

On 2016-11-24 17:10, Sébastien Hinderer wrote:

> Making it possible (easier) to cross-compile OCaml programs is one of
> the outcomes the work I am doing with Gallium (the team developping
> OCaml at Inria) is supposed to have. I am not sure yet how this can
> impact the production of Android apps, but as far as iOS apps are
> concerned, one thing I am supposed to work on is the integration of
> Gerd's pull request (can someone find the number?) which has been 
> stored
> in the ios-support branch of the OCaml repository on GitHub.
> 
> This should make it possible to cross-compile OCaml programs which can
> then be executed on iOS devices.
> 
> One other question will then be whether such programs can somehow use
> all the application frameworks provided by Apple.

Thanks for the reply.  That last point is crucial: without convenient
access to all the APIs, being able to cross-compile to iOS is not very
useful, at least to me.  Moreover, there's still the problem of cross
platform access to those fancy APIs.


> Regarding Android I don't know how helpful OCamljava could be but it
> might be worth investigating.

Were Android the sole target, OCaml-java would be a contender.  However,
I would like for the same program to be used both in Android and iOS,
with minimal (or zero) need to write platform-specific stubs to access
the various APIs.

Kind regards,
Dario Teixeira

Re: [Caml-list] Android/iOS apps with OCaml

[Vincent Balat]

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Hi,

The Ocsigen team is going to release Eliom 6 next week, which focuses on
mobile apps. We will also release Ocsigen Start, a template with an example
of multi platform application: a single code for both your Web app and
mobile html5 apps (Android, iOS, Windows).

If you want to see an example, download the Be Sport app on Google Play or
Apple app store and have a look at the Web app. They are all using Eliom 6
and Ocsigen Start.
https://play.google.com/store/apps/details?id=com.besport.www.mobile
https://itunes.apple.com/us/app/besport/id1104216922

It is not native code but the performance are good (even if we have some
problems on iOS, Apple's webview being very buggy). And this technique
requires to write only one code for all your apps (even with server side
generated pages for the Web version!).

Ocsigen Start will be released probably next week (we are polishing the
documentation) but is mature enough for large applications (as you can see
with Be Sport). We are also using the Cordova bindings by Danny Willems,
for some features.

Vincent Balat

Le ven. 25 nov. 2016 16:46, Dario Teixeira <dario.teixeira@nleyten.com> a
écrit :

> Hi,
>
> On 2016-11-24 17:10, Sébastien Hinderer wrote:
>
> > Making it possible (easier) to cross-compile OCaml programs is one of
> > the outcomes the work I am doing with Gallium (the team developping
> > OCaml at Inria) is supposed to have. I am not sure yet how this can
> > impact the production of Android apps, but as far as iOS apps are
> > concerned, one thing I am supposed to work on is the integration of
> > Gerd's pull request (can someone find the number?) which has been
> > stored
> > in the ios-support branch of the OCaml repository on GitHub.
> >
> > This should make it possible to cross-compile OCaml programs which can
> > then be executed on iOS devices.
> >
> > One other question will then be whether such programs can somehow use
> > all the application frameworks provided by Apple.
>
> Thanks for the reply.  That last point is crucial: without convenient
> access to all the APIs, being able to cross-compile to iOS is not very
> useful, at least to me.  Moreover, there's still the problem of cross
> platform access to those fancy APIs.
>
>
> > Regarding Android I don't know how helpful OCamljava could be but it
> > might be worth investigating.
>
> Were Android the sole target, OCaml-java would be a contender.  However,
> I would like for the same program to be used both in Android and iOS,
> with minimal (or zero) need to write platform-specific stubs to access
> the various APIs.
>
> Kind regards,
> Dario Teixeira
>
>
> --
> Caml-list mailing list.  Subscription management and archives:
> https://sympa.inria.fr/sympa/arc/caml-list
> Beginner's list: http://groups.yahoo.com/group/ocaml_beginners
> Bug reports: http://caml.inria.fr/bin/caml-bugs
>

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Re: [Caml-list] Android/iOS apps with OCaml

[Ian Zimmerman]

On 2016-11-30 22:09, Vincent Balat wrote:

> If you want to see an example, download the Be Sport app on Google
> Play or Apple app store and have a look at the Web app. They are all
> using Eliom 6 and Ocsigen Start.

> https://play.google.com/store/apps/details?id=com.besport.www.mobile

Is there (or can there be <grin/>) a place to get the app, other than
the google store?

I use CyanogenMod and F-Droid exclusively; I'm very curious about this
technology, but not enough to start using google again.

-- 
Please *no* private Cc: on mailing lists and newsgroups
Personal signed mail: please _encrypt_ and sign
Don't clear-text sign: http://cr.yp.to/smtp/8bitmime.html

Re: [Caml-list] Android/iOS apps with OCaml

[Vincent Balat]

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If you don't want to use Google Play, you can get the Android application
from here:
http://besport.com/besport-103010.apk

Le jeu. 1 déc. 2016 à 03:33, Ian Zimmerman <itz@primate.net> a écrit :

> On 2016-11-30 22:09, Vincent Balat wrote:
>
> > If you want to see an example, download the Be Sport app on Google
> > Play or Apple app store and have a look at the Web app. They are all
> > using Eliom 6 and Ocsigen Start.
>
> > https://play.google.com/store/apps/details?id=com.besport.www.mobile
>
> Is there (or can there be <grin/>) a place to get the app, other than
> the google store?
>
> I use CyanogenMod and F-Droid exclusively; I'm very curious about this
> technology, but not enough to start using google again.
>
> --
> Please *no* private Cc: on mailing lists and newsgroups
> Personal signed mail: please _encrypt_ and sign
> Don't clear-text sign: http://cr.yp.to/smtp/8bitmime.html
>
> --
> Caml-list mailing list.  Subscription management and archives:
> https://sympa.inria.fr/sympa/arc/caml-list
> Beginner's list: http://groups.yahoo.com/group/ocaml_beginners
> Bug reports: http://caml.inria.fr/bin/caml-bugs
>

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Re: [Caml-list] Android/iOS apps with OCaml

[Dario Teixeira]

Hi Vincent,

> The Ocsigen team is going to release Eliom 6 next week, which focuses
> on mobile apps. We will also release Ocsigen Start, a template with an
> example of multi platform application: a single code for both your Web
> app and mobile html5 apps (Android, iOS, Windows).

Thanks for the reply! Also good to hear about Eliom 6
finally being released... ;-)


> If you want to see an example, download the Be Sport app on Google
> Play or Apple app store and have a look at the Web app. They are all
> using Eliom 6 and Ocsigen Start.
> https://play.google.com/store/apps/details?id=com.besport.www.mobile
> [4]
> https://itunes.apple.com/us/app/besport/id1104216922 [5]
> 
> It is not native code but the performance are good (even if we have
> some problems on iOS, Apple's webview being very buggy). And this
> technique requires to write only one code for all your apps (even with
> server side generated pages for the Web version!).

Thanks for the feedback.  I've been playing a bit with Cordova,
and so far have found no major issues on Android.  I haven't
yet tested it on iOS, but I'll keep an eye out for Webview bugs.

I've also tried the Besport app, and couldn't find anything that
would immediately give away the fact that it's actually being
rendered by a browser widget. That's good.


> Ocsigen Start will be released probably next week (we are polishing
> the documentation) but is mature enough for large applications (as you
> can see with Be Sport). We are also using the Cordova bindings by
> Danny Willems, for some features.

I'll be sure to try it out.  This really seems like the most
straightforward way for developing cross-platform mobile apps
with OCaml...

Best regards,
Dario Teixeira