Running Erlang on Android

[Vasily Savin]

Hello everyone,

I have tried googling, but could not find anything remotely related. So have
you tried to run Erlang on Android or there are some limitations that
prevent that?

Regards,
Vasilij Savin

[Michael Turner-7]

Erlang needs something adequately Unix-like.  Erlang is a C-coded app, so
you pretty much need some approximation of the standard C library.  Does
Android deliver?

Android is Linux, but not really.  Android is a Java platform.  But not
even that, in the "write once run anywhere" sense.

http://arstechnica.com/open-source/reviews/2009/02/an-introduction-to-google-android-for-developers.ars

"Although Android is built on top of the Linux kernel, the platform has
very little in common with the conventional desktop Linux stack. In
fact, during a presentation at the Google IO conference, Google engineer
Patrick Brady stated unambiguously that Android is not Linux.

"Much of the Android userspace operates within the constraints of
Dalvik, Google's own custom Java virtual machine. Dalvik uses its own
bytecode format called Dex, and is not compatible with J2ME or other
Java runtime environments. Third-party Android applications are written
in Java using Android's official APIs and widget toolkit. The Android
SDK includes special compilation tools that will translate Java class
files into Dex bytecode and generate an installation package that can be
deployed on Android devices."

Baffled?

Call me a cynic, but have you looked at Google's P/E?  It's
ridiculously high.  Something's gotta give eventually, and I think
it'll be the numerator.  But imagine you're high up in Google, with
lots of stock options.  Of course, you want your options to vest with a
handsome profit.  But that can't happen if the P part of the P/E drops
down to something rational and un-exuberant.  So you might promote all
kinds of unlikely projects if you noticed (and how could you not?) that
any thrusty new project associated with Google made many investors
continue to think that Google might have The Next Big Thing.  They all
want to believe that anyway, of course, but spending what *seems* like
lots of money signals to those investors that their belief is almost
certainly justified.

Maybe Ericcson should come out with an Erlang over TRON over ARM, for
phones.  They could call it Ndroid, right?  When Google sued them for
that name (a legal move that would do little more than generate valuable
publicity for Ericsson), they could quickly change the name to
ARMsTRONg.  (After all, Intel *couldn't* sue them for that -- it's too
late, Intel gave up on ARM, which they never really wanted anyway, since
it just came as part of their winnings in some lawsuit.)

Why, yes, I *did* used to work in Silicon Valley until I got sick to
death of marketing/stock-manipulation/patent-infringement-claim
headgames.  How did you guess?

-michael

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[Andrew Stone-5]

If you want a real Linux phone that can run Erlang, check out the Nokia N900.

It runs the maemo platform which uses .deb packages. Of course Erlang needs to be ported but it looks like plenty of work is in progress. Here's one page I found with a quick search.

http://thomas.apestaart.org/log/?p=1086

-Andrew




----- Original Message ----
From: Michael Turner <[hidden email]>
To: Vasilij Savin <[hidden email]>; Erlang-Questions Questions <[hidden email]>
Sent: Fri, January 15, 2010 6:56:01 AM
Subject: [erlang-questions] Re: Running Erlang on Android (like running sheep on electricity)


Erlang needs something adequately Unix-like.  Erlang is a C-coded app, so
you pretty much need some approximation of the standard C library.  Does
Android deliver?

Android is Linux, but not really.  Android is a Java platform.  But not
even that, in the "write once run anywhere" sense.

http://arstechnica.com/open-source/reviews/2009/02/an-introduction-to-google-android-for-developers.ars

"Although Android is built on top of the Linux kernel, the platform has
very little in common with the conventional desktop Linux stack. In
fact, during a presentation at the Google IO conference, Google engineer
Patrick Brady stated unambiguously that Android is not Linux.

"Much of the Android userspace operates within the constraints of
Dalvik, Google's own custom Java virtual machine. Dalvik uses its own
bytecode format called Dex, and is not compatible with J2ME or other
Java runtime environments. Third-party Android applications are written
in Java using Android's official APIs and widget toolkit. The Android
SDK includes special compilation tools that will translate Java class
files into Dex bytecode and generate an installation package that can be
deployed on Android devices."

Baffled?

Call me a cynic, but have you looked at Google's P/E?  It's
ridiculously high.  Something's gotta give eventually, and I think
it'll be the numerator.  But imagine you're high up in Google, with
lots of stock options.  Of course, you want your options to vest with a
handsome profit.  But that can't happen if the P part of the P/E drops
down to something rational and un-exuberant.  So you might promote all
kinds of unlikely projects if you noticed (and how could you not?) that
any thrusty new project associated with Google made many investors
continue to think that Google might have The Next Big Thing.  They all
want to believe that anyway, of course, but spending what *seems* like
lots of money signals to those investors that their belief is almost
certainly justified.

Maybe Ericcson should come out with an Erlang over TRON over ARM, for
phones.  They could call it Ndroid, right?  When Google sued them for
that name (a legal move that would do little more than generate valuable
publicity for Ericsson), they could quickly change the name to
ARMsTRONg.  (After all, Intel *couldn't* sue them for that -- it's too
late, Intel gave up on ARM, which they never really wanted anyway, since
it just came as part of their winnings in some lawsuit.)

Why, yes, I *did* used to work in Silicon Valley until I got sick to
death of marketing/stock-manipulation/patent-infringement-claim
headgames.  How did you guess?

-michael

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erlang-questions mailing list. See http://www.erlang.org/faq.html
erlang-questions (at) erlang.org

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erlang-questions (at) erlang.org

[Jayson Vantuyl-2]

It appears that there is something that approximates libc on Android  
(even called libc.so). Here's a link to a guy that first built a  
minimal Debian install, then later figured out how to patch a project  
(in this case, Mono) to run natively.

http://www.koushikdutta.com/2009/01/compiling-mono-under-android-build.html

As much as I don't particularly care for what Google has done, Java,  
Python, Ruby, and .NET can run on Android. If Erlang doesn't, I don't  
think the reasons are so much technical as they are more a lack of  
time and desire to do it.  In either case, let's not blame Google.  
That's an unnecessary excuse.

Sent from my iPhone

On Jan 15, 2010, at 3:56 AM, "Michael Turner" <[hidden email]> wrote:

>
> Erlang needs something adequately Unix-like.  Erlang is a C-coded  
> app, so
> you pretty much need some approximation of the standard C library.  
> Does
> Android deliver?
>
> Android is Linux, but not really.  Android is a Java platform.  But  
> not
> even that, in the "write once run anywhere" sense.
>
> http://arstechnica.com/open-source/reviews/2009/02/an-introduction-to-google-android-for-developers.ars
>
> "Although Android is built on top of the Linux kernel, the platform  
> has
> very little in common with the conventional desktop Linux stack. In
> fact, during a presentation at the Google IO conference, Google  
> engineer
> Patrick Brady stated unambiguously that Android is not Linux.
>
> "Much of the Android userspace operates within the constraints of
> Dalvik, Google's own custom Java virtual machine. Dalvik uses its own
> bytecode format called Dex, and is not compatible with J2ME or other
> Java runtime environments. Third-party Android applications are  
> written
> in Java using Android's official APIs and widget toolkit. The Android
> SDK includes special compilation tools that will translate Java class
> files into Dex bytecode and generate an installation package that  
> can be
> deployed on Android devices."
>
> Baffled?
>
> Call me a cynic, but have you looked at Google's P/E?  It's
> ridiculously high.  Something's gotta give eventually, and I think
> it'll be the numerator.  But imagine you're high up in Google, with
> lots of stock options.  Of course, you want your options to vest  
> with a
> handsome profit.  But that can't happen if the P part of the P/E drops
> down to something rational and un-exuberant.  So you might promote all
> kinds of unlikely projects if you noticed (and how could you not?)  
> that
> any thrusty new project associated with Google made many investors
> continue to think that Google might have The Next Big Thing.  They all
> want to believe that anyway, of course, but spending what *seems* like
> lots of money signals to those investors that their belief is almost
> certainly justified.
>
> Maybe Ericcson should come out with an Erlang over TRON over ARM, for
> phones.  They could call it Ndroid, right?  When Google sued them for
> that name (a legal move that would do little more than generate  
> valuable
> publicity for Ericsson), they could quickly change the name to
> ARMsTRONg.  (After all, Intel *couldn't* sue them for that -- it's too
> late, Intel gave up on ARM, which they never really wanted anyway,  
> since
> it just came as part of their winnings in some lawsuit.)
>
> Why, yes, I *did* used to work in Silicon Valley until I got sick to
> death of marketing/stock-manipulation/patent-infringement-claim
> headgames.  How did you guess?
>
> -michael
>
> ________________________________________________________________
> erlang-questions mailing list. See http://www.erlang.org/faq.html
> erlang-questions (at) erlang.org
>

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