Android vs Monodroid

Karthikeyan Anbarasan

Friends,

Here is my questions

Which is best to start with Creating a traditional Android application by downloading all the API's and use an Eclipse to write an Android application OR Download the Monodroid SDK and start wrting an application for android using Visual Studio?

Which is preferable out of these 2 options?

If we select the 2nd option to go with Monodroid, do the Android Market place requires any additional packages required to upload and run our application online?

7 Replies

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Vulpes15y ago
Accepted answer
I'm not sure it's a good idea at the moment to use Mono For Android (http://mono-android.net/) now that the team developing it have been made redundant by AttachMate, the new owner of Novell.

The future of the product is uncertain and it's not even clear how AttachMate are going to support it now all the Mono developers, including Miguel De Icaza, have left to form Xamarin (http://xamarin.com/) which is creating its own version of the software though it won't be ready for a few months.

If you must do something now, then I'd use Java instead. However, there's even a cloud hanging over that as the use of Java with the non-standard Dalvik runtime is currently the subject of a dispute between Google and Oracle, the new owners of Sun. If Google were to lose this dispute, then I wouldn't be surprised to see them junk the Java based APIs and write it all again using C++ to avoid having to pay royalties to Oracle.
Vulpes15y ago
Yes, I knew that you're stuck with the Dalvik runtime having to be loaded even if you use Mono for Android.

However, that's very good news about Xamarin and the effective continuation of the existing products, with the improvements they've already written since leaving Novell rolled in.

Presumably, they couldn't tell us about this before as they will still hammering out the details with Attachmate.

That still leaves the mystery of who's funding Xamarin as one imagines that it will be a long time yet before they become self-supporting. I wonder if it is Microsoft?
Sam Hobbs15y ago
Vuples, see Architecture - Mono for Android. Mono "runs side-by-side with the Dalvik Virtual Machine". Both Mono and Dalvik are written in C. The Dalvik Virtual Machine is not used by Mono. It is necessary for Android programs to use Dalvik for some things that Mono does not support.

In reply to the original question, the gates are now open for using Mono for Android; see Novell/Xamarin Partnership around Mono. Xamarin will be supporting and selliing it and the other Mono tools and will now support the Mono open source community project. See the Xamarin store for purchases.

There will be a Monospace conference this weekend.

Also see the Xamarin mobile products available now! « xamarin press release.

I don't understand why Vulpes's reply is the answer; I said to wait for news, and now we have news. Does today's news help answer the question?
Vulpes15y ago
Even if you use C++ to develop part of your Android application, you still can't avoid the Java API and the Dalvik runtime completely - see http://developer.android.com/sdk/ndk/overview.html - which is a pity :(

If Google did decide to get rid of Java, then they couldn't replace it anytime soon as there's apparently 2.1 million lines within the OS!
Sam Hobbs15y ago
The world will change July 23 - 25 at the Monospace conference in Boston! Until then you can invest time learning but the time might be wasted. Most likely any time you spend learning will be productive, whatever you use. Anything new will likely support anything you learn now.

Don't buy MonoDroid or any of the products from Novell, at least not until the company provides support. Currently the software is being ignored by the new owners; people that have a legal right to get refunds are not getting refunds and owners that need to get their systems licensed cannot get that done even though they have a legal right to it. You can use a trial versoin of MonoDroid for free that can be used to test applications using a virtual device in Windows.

So if you are familiar with Silverlight then you can learn about Andoid programming using Silverlight but note that there is currently no indication that it will be free. You will likely have to purchase .NET for Android but as I said many things will change July 23 - 25.

There is a third option for Android development. It is possible to develop using C++. Android is Linux and C/C++ is the native language for Unix/Linux. Some people even use Visual Studio to do Android development using C++.
Vulpes15y ago
It sounds like Karthikeyan's best option will be to wait for for the Xamarin offering.

What do you think about the Google versus Oracle matter, Mahesh?

If it goes to court and they lose, do you think Google will be prepared to pay Oracle royalties to keep using Java which is what most commentators seem to think?

They must be regretting now not buying Sun themselves (for what, to them, would have been loose change) or writing the Android API in C++ to start with!
Mahesh Chand15y ago
I asked Migual other day and he pointed out and looks like work is going on. New products are being called .NET for iPhone and .NET for Android. Not sure how long it will take them to complete these but I am sure they will look like MonoTouch and MonoDroid or very close.

http://tirania.org/blog/archive/2011/Jun-28.html