This is a native Android application for Ruffle.

It is in a very early stage.

Prebuilt APKs

The latest release (here) should have a few .apk files uploaded as assets.

You can try this app by downloading and installing one of those.

• For the vast majority of modern phones, tablets, single board computers, and small game consoles, you'll need the arm64-v8a version.

• The armeabi-v7a version is for older, 32-bit ARM stuff.

• The x86_64 version is for some rare Intel/Microsoft tablets and/or for Chromebooks, and/or for running on a PC on Android-x86 or in Waydroid or similar.

• The x86 version is there mostly just for completeness.

• The universal version should work on all 4 of the above architectures, but it's huge.

Build Prerequisites

Install Android Sudio with at least the Platform SDK (e.g. 28) and the NDK Tools (at least r24 needed due to https://github.com/rust-windowing/android-ndk-rs/issues/255).

Ensure java is Java 17.

cargo install cargo-apk

rustup target add aarch64-linux-android Optionally also with: armv7-linux-androideabi x86_64-linux-android i686-linux-android

Build Steps

Substitute the appropriate locations and NDK version in the variables set for the cargo-apk command.

cd native
ANDROID_HOME=$HOME/Android/Sdk/ ANDROID_NDK_ROOT=$HOME/Android/Sdk/ndk/24.0.8215888/ \
  cargo apk -- build --release --target aarch64-linux-android
# optionally leave the --target option to build for all four archs

mkdir -p ../app/ruffle/src/main/jniLibs
mkdir -p ../app/ruffle/src/main/jniLibs/arm64-v8a/
cp target/aarch64-linux-android/release/libruffle_android.so ../app/ruffle/src/main/jniLibs/arm64-v8a/
# Optionally the above two lines for all of these four pairs, not just the first:
#   target/aarch64-linux-android   -> jniLibs/arm64-v8a
#   target/armv7-linux-androideabi -> jniLibs/armeabi-v7a
#   target/x86_64-linux-android    -> jniLibs/x86_64
#   target/i686-linux-android      -> jniLibs/x86

cd ../app
./gradlew assembleDebug # the "release" version requires a keyfile

The final APK should be at:

app/ruffle/build/outputs/apk/debug/ruffle-universal-debug.apk

There are also (optionally) single-arch split APKs next to it.

After the first step (installing Android Studio), opening the app project in Android Studio for development and debugging also works. The native libraries will still have to be built and copied over manually every time though, as shown above.

Development Tips

Set the target of rust-analyzer to x86_64-linux-android (or even aarch64-linux-android), to stop one of the NDK crates from erroring out due to compilation to an unsupported platform.

Also set the ANDROID_HOME and ANDROID_NDK_ROOT extra environment variables for it to suitable values, so the C parts of the dependencies can also be built by it.

---

TODO

In no particular order:

• Ability to show the built-in virtual keyboard (softinput), for text input
• Controller/Gamepad input?
  • Mapped to key presses and/or virtual mouse pointer
• Own custom keyboard overlay, maybe even per-content configs
  • Not an overlay, and not per-content, but custom keyboard is there
• Navigator backend (fetch, open browser)
  • Opening links works at least
• Error/panic handling
• Loading "animation" (spinner)
• Logging?
• Alternative audio backend (OpenSL ES) for Android < 8
• UI backend (context menu)
  • Context menu works
• Proper storage backend?
• Cross-platform build instructions?
• Resolve design glitches/styling/theming (immersive mode, window insets for holes/notches/corners)
• Publish to various app stores, maybe automatically?
• Simplify build process (hook cargo-apk into gradle, drop cargo-apk?)
  • cargo-apk is fine, but is only used to detect the SDK/NDK environment and run Cargo in it, and not to build an APK.
• Bundle demo animations/games
• Add ability to load content from well known online collections? (well maybe not z0r... unless?)
• History, favorites, other flair...?
• Clean up ~everything

DONE:

• Touch/mouse input
• Keyboard input: only with physical keyboard connected or through scrcpy
  • This was needed: https://github.com/rust-windowing/winit/pull/2226
• Split into a separate repo
• Add ability to Open SWF by entered/pasted URL (or even directly from clipboard)
  • No direct clipboard open, but easy to paste into the text field...
• Unglitchify rendering: scale, center and letterbox the content properly
• Ask CPAL/Oboe to open a "media" type output stream instead of a "call" one
  • so the right volume slider controls it, and it uses the loud(er)speaker
  • -> solved by switching to a direct AAudio (ndk-audio) backend
• Add building this to CI, at least to the release workflow
  • This repo has its own CI setup, which builds APKs
• Somehow filter files to be picked to .swf
  • How well this works depends on the file picker, but it "should work most of the time"
• Unglitchify audio volume (buttons unresponsive?)
  • (pending: https://github.com/rust-windowing/winit/pull/1919)
  • actually solved by switching to GameActivity instead
• Register Ruffle to open .swf files
  • How well this works depends on the application opening the file, but it "should work most of the time"
• Figure out why videos are not playing (could be a seeking issue)
  • The video decoder features weren't enabled on ruffle_core...
• Sign the APK
  • Using a very simple key for now, with just my name in it
• Support for 32-bit ARM phones
  • Untested, but should work in theory
• Support for x86(_64) tablets?
  • Sorted out
• Consider not building the intermediate .apk just for the shared libraries
  • Figured out, no intermediate .apk any more, only native libs built
• Unbreak the regular build on CI
  • No longer relevant after the repo split
• Clean up commit history of the branch
  • No longer relevant after the repo split