How to work on the Android port of Simon Tatham's Portable Puzzle Collection ============================================================================ ...without writing any code --------------------------- Good bug reports and well-thought-out feature suggestions are always helpful. The issue tracker is: http://github.com/chrisboyle/sgtpuzzles/issues Simon has an excellent page on how to write a good bug report: http://www.chiark.greenend.org.uk/~sgtatham/bugs.html Coders should read on... Prerequisites ------------- Some knowledge of Android Development and/or C, and ideally JNI, depending on what you want to work on: the puzzles themselves are in C, most Android-specific code is in Java, and JNI (Java Native Interface) is the API bridge between the two. If you have the option, a Linux-based development machine, as I haven't tried to build on Windows or OSX, and it will need some tweaks. Android Studio https://developer.android.com/sdk/installing/studio.html Android NDK (Native Development Kit) http://developer.android.com/sdk/ndk/ Create local.properties with ndk.dir=/your_path_here ...and I probably missed a few things. File a bug when you find them. :-) Getting/configuring the source ------------------------------ The source lives at http://github.com/chrisboyle/sgtpuzzles - you can either clone/download it from there, or make your own fork on github (the Fork button near the top right). A fork means you can easily send me a "pull request" of your change, and I can review and integrate it, all within github. You'll also find a branch called "upstream", which is Simon's code whenever I last synced. Handy for diffs, to see what I broke on Android. :-) You should now be able to edit, build and launch the app like any other Android project (except a lot of it is in C). Don't forget that you'll be signing with a dev key, so to test on a device that already has the Google Play version, uninstall that first. Architecture / where to find stuff ---------------------------------- Simon has some excellent docs here: http://www.chiark.greenend.org.uk/~sgtatham/puzzles/devel/ Go and read those, at least the Introduction. The Android front-end (android.c) is basically just glue, passing everything to Java. The Java classes providing the UI layer, game chooser, crash handler, etc. are in app/src/main/java. The main class SGTPuzzles has the native methods that android.c implements. The game area on screen is a GameView, which basically just has a bitmap for the puzzle to draw on. Note that almost no native code is run until the user has chosen a game (unless there's a previous game to resume). Files for other platforms etc. that are not currently usable in this fork are in the not-in-use directory. If your change is relevant to other platforms, you should definitely ping Simon about it as well as me, but test on at least one other platform first in a separate checkout (see above). Major changes e.g. adding a game -------------------------------- At this level you especially need to think carefully about other platforms. One of the best features of this collection is its relative consistency across different environments, and the Android port should continue that. If adding a game, definitely read the relevant chaper (6) of Simon's development docs, and add the new game to the places I've gone and duplicated the list just for Android... [ TODO re-create the list of such places here, following the migration to Android Studio ] Happy hacking! :-) --Chris Boyle