protoform

A protoform is a building block, a starting point for building androidy things. This little gem generates an application skeleton for a Mirah Android application. Because Android is exciting, but Java is still kinda painful.

If you don't already have the Android SDK, download it from http://developer.android.com/sdk/index.html and follow the quick-start instructions. You'll need to create an Android Virtual Device (AVD) using the Android Manager (android) found in the SDK.

You'll also want to have Mirah installed of course. You can get it from GitHub: https://github.com/mirah/mirah

Make sure that jruby, mirah and mirahc are in your PATH as well as the Android SDK tools directory.

Install the gem and run the generator, specifying the package name you want to use and the Android SDK location:

gem install protoform
protoform -S ~/android/sdk -T "Hello Android" -P org.zerosum.android HelloWorld

This should generate an app skeleton in the directory HelloWorld. Change to that directory and run the ant debug task:

ant debug

Assuming that your prerequisites are all set and the task succeeds, you should now have a .apk file in your bin/ directory. Fire up the Android AVD Manager (android) to launch the emulator, and install the APK using the adb tool:

adb install bin/HelloWorld-debug.apk

You should now be able to navigate to the applications list in the emulator and launch your application.

Alternatively, you can use the ant install target to install / reinstall the debug package.

This work is based on / inspired by Technomancy's Android / Mirah experiments.

If you'd like to help out, contributions are definitely welcome. Mirah is very slick, and with a little work we can make it a great alternative to Java for Android development. Transform and roll out!

Copyright (c) 2010 Nick Plante. See LICENSE.txt for further details.