[Vm-dev] [ANN] Squeak on Android

Andreas Raab andreas.raab at gmx.de
Mon Jan 18 06:18:48 UTC 2010


Folks -

Sorry for being quiet over the weekend but I was busy with my new toy - 
a shiny new unlocked Nexus One which arrived last week fresh from the 
Google store.

As a result of my weekend distraction you can now download and run 
Squeak on any Android based phone. If you have an Android phone, simply 
search for "squeak" in the Android market place and it should find it 
right there (sorry, Google doesn't seem to give web access to the apps 
in the store so I can't send a link).

Please be aware that this is not a full port yet. It's a weekend effort 
to show the basic feasibility. Lots (and I mean *lots*) of things are 
still missing from a full port (among those is text input and network 
support to name just two of the more glaring ones). However, I would be 
*very* interested to hear if (and how well) it works for other 
Android-based cell phones. So if you have a Motorola Droid or or a 
T-Mobile G1 give it a shot and post some benchmark results.

Performance on the Nexus One is about what one would expect: With 
roughly 1M sends/sec and 30M bytecodes/sec it's not exactly rocking but 
it's quite usable for most tasks on a mobile device. (Input is 
*terrible* though; Squeak's UI is not made for fat-fingered clicks like 
mine :-)

Since the code itself is quite messy at this point, it isn't published 
anywhere yet. If people are interested in contributing, please let me 
know and I'll share what I have even before it's cleaned up. Be warned 
though, unless you know how to deal with both the Android SDK and NDK, 
Java, JNI, and the Squeak VM it will be a very steep learning curve.

And of course, attached a little screenshot (taken on the emulator; I 
haven't found out how to use my phone to make pictures of my phone :)

Cheers,
   - Andreas

PS. I don't recall micro benchmarks on the iPhone - John can you repost 
those to see how well the hardware stacks up?
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