plain old c ... minus

6.25: pos.adda/plain old c ... minus:
[6.30:
. google's native-code sandboxes
in Android and in Chromium OS
are an important platform,
and should be considered before
deciding what "std" C is .] [6.28:
. many platforms will restrict the std libraries
in order to further enhance security
or adapt to smaller, energy-wise situations .]

. keep in mind what's available in
the android ndk:
libc (the C library), -- as Bionic, not glibc.
JNI interface, -- controller-view of your mvc;
OpenGL ES {1.1, 2.0} (3D graphics)
libm (Math),
libz (Zlib compression)
liblog (Android logging)
libjnigraphics (JNI Pixel buffer access)

. the API is included with the sdk;
so, get that installed on ubuntu

(eclipse runs better there than mac?) .

details of android's custom libc:

. customizing libc (as Bionic)
was necessary for three reasons:
* License:
keep GPL out of user-space.
Bionic code uses the BSD license.
* Size:
Bionic is half the size of glibc
* Speed:
custom pthread implementation.
Bionic has built-in support for
important Android-specific services
such as system properties and logging.

It doesn't support certain POSIX features,
like wide chars (wchar_t)
-- The world has moved on to Unicode
with its various fixed and variable
width encodings,
which the wide character type
is not particularly useful for.

. use ICU for internationalization support,
(International Components for Unicode)
instead of LOCALE .
ICU is a mature, widely used set of
C/C++ and Java libraries providing
Unicode and Globalization support
for software applications.
ICU is widely portable
and gives applications the same results on all platforms
and between C/C++ and Java software.
threads
The bionic C library has it's own thread API,
not the same as either original LinuxThreads or NPTL.
It implements only support for Dalvik JVM,

Mutexes, rwlocks, condvars, etc
are all implemented using kernel futexes,
-- see Ulrich Drepper's futex whitepaper.
There is no pthread_cancel().
Threads can exit,
but can not be killed by another thread.
There is no pthread_atfork().
Thread local storage is implemented,
with up to 64 keys handled.
Android reserves several of these for its own use:
the per-thread id and errno,
as well as two variables related to OpenGL
whose function I do not understand.

stdio, stdlib, string, unistd:
. removed the LOCALE support from strtod()
(i.e., is the decimal point a period or a comma?
In the Bionic library it is always a period).

{openlog(), syslog()} are replaced with
__libc_android_log_print()

Bionic uses Doug Lea's malloc, dlmalloc.
Bionic also provides a hash table
to track allocations
looking for leaks, in malloc_leak.c.

no asynchronous AIO routines
aio_read() or aio_write().

no crypt()
-- uses OpenSSL for that .
. dispenses with most file-based Unix administration.
no getfsent,
because no /etc/fstab.
. there is a /var/run/utmp,
and so there is a getutent()
Android implements its own account management,
and does not use /etc/passwd.

. no getpwent(),
and getpwnam()/getpwuid() are implemented as
wrappers around an Android ID service.
At present, the Android ID service consists of
25 hard-coded accounts in android_filesystem_config.h

. no termios support (good riddance).

Bionic is a BSD-based libc with support for
Linux system calls and interfaces.
If limitations prove untenable,
the syscall and pthread mutex implementation
could be repurposed into the heavier
FreeBSD/NetBSD/OpenBSD libc,
though handling thread cancellation
while using the Bionic mutexes
could require additional work.