Getting started with JUCE for Android

Question

I need to start building an Android app that uses the JUCE libraries. I'm reading the web site and trying to figure stuff out.

I tried installing JUCE on an Ubuntu 11.04 system, and when I built the IntroJucer app, the menus don't work right (they flash open when I click with the mouse but then disappear). Can a JUCE app for Android be built on Mac OS X, or even Windows?

If you are using JUCE to build Android apps, please give me any advice you can.

Answer 1

Yes, a Juce app can be written for Android using either OS X (XCode 4) or Windows (Microsoft Visual Studio 2008 and higher). You also have the option of using the Eclipse IDE on either platform.

At the time you posted, Juce was undergoing a major overhaul and the IntroJucer might not have been as stable as it needed to be, especially on systems other than OS X or Windows. You should look into it again. IntroJucer is not required to build a Juce Application (although it can make things easier).

I suggest you first build the Juce Demo application for your platform. If Ubuntu is giving you trouble, try OS X or Windows first. Once you have the Juce Demo running you can move on to IntroJucer. If that works, then try compiling Juce Demo for Android. Your questions can be answered in the Android Juce Forum:

http://rawmaterialsoftware.com/viewforum.php?f=13

Answer 2

Here is what I have figured out now that I have been working with this stuff for a bit.

All of this is based on the most recent "stable" release of JUCE, which is about ten months old as I write this. It is quite possible that things have changed (for the better!) in more bleeding-edge releases of JUCE, and when I get a chance I will try a newer JUCE.

• The best platform is Mac OS X. When I tried Linux I had some issues with Eclipse not working; I still prefer Linux so I'm going to go back and try again, but on Windows and Mac I had no Eclipse troubles.

• Start by installing the Android SDK, and running the updater to grab all the updates. Also install the Android NDK, and Eclipse. In Eclipse, install the ADT plugin.

• JUCE sets up an Ant build file that will build all the C++ code for you, automatically. You need to not mess with this. I had a problem where there was a task called "setup" and Ant didn't know how to resolve it; the solution was to delete the "setup" task and not touch anything else. When I was trying to figure out how to solve this issue, I found suggestions here on StackOverflow to run this command: android update project --path . DO NOT DO THIS for JUCE. This re-writes your build.xml file and the special JUCE stuff to build the C++ code disappears; then you build and you get a tiny .APK file (about 10 KB) that contains only the Java setup code and no compiled C++, and does not work. So, just to be clear, the solution to the "setup" build problem is to delete that build task and touch nothing else, and not to completely replace your build.xml file.

• The JUCE build process relies on a Bash shell script to do some work. On Mac OS X this works great; on Windows, the build fails with an error from CreateProcess() because CreateProcess() doesn't understand Bash shell scripts. It should be possible to edit this and make it work, but out of the box it works perfectly on Mac OS X.

• For testing your code on an Android device, you must sign your code. Eclipse makes it easy to build either signed or unsigned .APK file, but the unsigned file is nearly useless. The only thing you can do with an unsigned .APK is run it in the emulator.

Once I had all the above stuff correct, I had no problems with building the JUCE app for Android.