Racket/Dr. Racket on Android?

[Lawrence Bottorff]

Is there a version of Racket for Android yet?

[Daniel Brunner]

Hey,

Am 20.04.2017 um 18:30 schrieb Lawrence Bottorff:
> Is there a version of Racket for Android yet?
>

Jay McCarthy did this: https://github.com/jeapostrophe/racket-android

I haven't tried it yet.

Best wishes,
Daniel

[Vincent St-Amour]

There is! Thanks to Jay McCarthy, Byron Davies, and Black Swan Learning LLC.

https://github.com/jeapostrophe/racket-android

Vincent

On Thu, 20 Apr 2017 11:30:55 -0500,
Lawrence Bottorff wrote:
>
> Is there a version of Racket for Android yet?
>

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[Jay McCarthy]

I interpret the question as, "Can I download something, write Racket
programs on my tablet, and run them?"

The answer to that is "No".

Instead, "racket-android" lets you write an Android app in Racket.

Jay

--
-=[ Jay McCarthy http://jeapostrophe.github.io ]=-
-=[ Associate Professor PLT @ CS @ UMass Lowell ]=-
-=[ Moses 1:33: And worlds without number have I created; ]=-

[Leif Andersen]

I should point out that the current racket-android project does not
currently support most of the Android APIs that developers are used
to, and instead offers an OpenGL ES context. This is because the
android-ndk does not have those APIs (unlike the sdk.) FWIW, if you do
want them, there are C wrappers you can use, and then you can use the
FFI to use those. Although I have no idea what the speed would be,
probably slow though.

~Leif Andersen

[Vincent Manis]

On 2017-04-20 10:35, Jay McCarthy wrote:
> I interpret the question as, "Can I download something, write Racket
> programs on my tablet, and run them?"
>
> The answer to that is "No".
>
> Instead, "racket-android" lets you write an Android app in Racket.
>
> Jay
>

I have had some success using Racket in text mode as follows.
1. Install GNURoot Debian from the Play store. (This does NOT require a
rooted device).
2. Install your favorite editor (apt-get install vim/emacs/whatever).
3. Install racket from the jessie-backports repository (apt-get
-t=jessie-backports install racket). That gets you 6.7, which isn't
current, but isn't too far back.

This gives you a terminal-based REPL, and access to the command-line
Racket tools. It does not give you graphics or a GUI.

This worked fairly well on my Samsung Galaxy Tab 4 tablet (which died
this morning), and also seems to work on my new Lenovo Tab 10. No speed
demon, but it's quite usable, at least for writing and running bits and
pieces of code, which is what I've used it for so far.

I did try, on the Samsung, installing the XSDL X server. I was able to
get Dr Racket working, but it was too slow to be usable. Maybe somebody
who knows more about such things can add some advice.

This is certainly no plug-and-play solution to the problem, but it may
be useful to some people.

Of course, Racket (or programming in general) with an onscreen keyboard
is too painful for words. You almost certainly will need a Bluetooth or
similar keyboard.

-- vincent