As mentioned already a couple of times with online discussions with Dan and AMA on Reddit, from me and others:
An NDK version of Android JetPack/AndroidX, for starters proper C++ API, instead of forcing everyone to code 90's style, each re-creating their own C++ wrappers for the Android C++ APIs exposed as C function calls.
Which by the way, given the whole security theme on Android, means more insecure code than if we had those C++ APIs to start with.
Have one shot libraries like Oboe actually be part of NDK and not in another github repo with uncertain future versus the Android platform.
For basic stuff like reading files (using the platform codecs e.g. BitmapFactory, now SAF as well), asking permissions, calling Java from C++, it would be nice if all NDK users wouldn't be force to keep writing those from scratch as rite of passage.
Actually provide build infrastructure to create NDK libraries that can be shared across Android projects, instead of forcing us to somehow cram library and header files into AAR packages while having build scripts extract them for correct placement where cmake and ndk-build expect to find them. cdep never went anywhere, while conan and vcpkg aren't the right answer when many NDK libraries need Java code to come along due to JNI wrappers for like 90% of Android APIs.
Android Studio networking debugger support, currently only supported for networking calls done in Java/Kotlin code.
Easier CMake support for multiple libraries on our projects, which is found lacking versus how easy it is on ndk-build.
As mentioned, these are just a couple of issues that we keep mentioning, always getting some kind of "thanks for the feedback, we will look into it". Just like the NDK status talk at Google IO 2019.
From the outside it doesn't look like NDK is that staffed with engineers, more like a 20% project where a little bit is done every year, like how long it took to fix the header files, adding minimal C++ support to Android Studio, or settling into CMake as the future build system.
EDIT: Almost forgot this one, fix the regressions regarding missing GCC features in clang (Android NDK tracker used to have a couple of them listed).
We do have limited resources, so we have to prioritize what gets done first. We couldn't have provided good C++ APIs before we were even able to provide good C++. We now do provide a pretty good C++ language experience, but this is still not at the top of the todo list. No one else I've spoken to thinks this is more important than the other work we're doing.
> Actually provide build infrastructure to create NDK libraries that can be shared across Android projects, instead of forcing us to somehow cram library and header files into AAR packages while having build scripts extract them for correct placement where cmake and ndk-build expect to find them. cdep never went anywhere, while conan and vcpkg aren't the right answer when many NDK libraries need Java code to come along due to JNI wrappers for like 90% of Android APIs.
This is what I've been working on for most of the year.
> like how long it took to fix the header files
This only took a single release (the rest of the time was to give users a chance to transition), and we did plenty of other things in the same release, so I'm not sure what you're getting at.
> Easier CMake support for multiple libraries on our projects, which is found lacking versus how easy it is on ndk-build.
Not sure what you mean here, but it sounds like CMake is what you don't like? Just use ndk-build then.
So it is really a matter of not having the same resources as Java/Kotlin teams.
Thanks for the update on possible NDK library management.
Regarding the headers, what I am getting at, is why it was such a big issue to fix them, instead of being proper from the start, like other OSes, including embedded ones.
Anyway, thanks for improving the experience versus what it used to be in the early NDK releases.
> Regarding the headers, what I am getting at, is why it was such a big issue to fix them, instead of being proper from the start, like other OSes, including embedded ones.
Our time machine isn't working yet ;)
That's before my time, so all I can really say is that we have the benefit of hindsight here.
I'm happy to pass these along to Dan and your comment is easy for me to link to, but I don't know why you're suggesting Google move LLVM compiler engineers to work on NDK, which is more of a userspace C++ framework for third party applications to interface with the Android platform. Kind of feels orthogonal to this thread which is about the llvm 9.0 release.
> fix the regressions regarding missing GCC features in clang (Android NDK tracker used to have a couple of them listed).
Now that sounds more like work for Android LLVM engineers, but it sounds like the list is removed? Could you elaborate and point me to some? (Assume anything you claim in a response I'll just ask for a link)
* EDIT * (it seems I can't reply further)
Thanks for the links. I'll pass on both links as feedback and follow up on the state of those two LLVM reported regressions.
I am suggesting that, because as I mentioned it looks understaffed from the outside, either that or there isn't that much willingness to spend resources on improving it beyond "good enough".
Given that you mentioned, that there were actually so many LLVM engineers around, I thought they could give them an hand. :)
> what is missing versus Java/Kotlin.
I'd be happy to pass on feedback, though as worded I'm not sure if you're referring to language features or what exactly?