Red Programming Language for Android development

Red has been around for a while now and has been extending its purpose from systems programming to various fields like Blockchain, Android development, among others. Recently, Red introduced some modern implementation support for Android programming.

The way Red can be used in Android programming is using a specific bridge, that allows the Red code to call the whole Android API in Java. This allows you to write Android applications in Red language without having to write any Java code.

Red, in its latest release, has introduced a new and improved Java bridge for Android. Java bridge was first introduced in Red's version 0.3. With this bridge, the Red programs are able to interface Java Virtual Machine through JNI (Java Native Interface). The new Java bridge now replaces the old implementation and is now optimized for efficient bindings of Red programs to the Android API in Java. This optimization greatly improves the performance of the Android application.

To explain this, Red has published a short overview of Red/View backend on Android, the source code for which can be found on this GitHub repo.

Red his also been working on implementing several features in its v0.7 release. The community has released a short list of features on its site, though all the work on these features is done in a private repository. The private repo will be opened to selected developers soon for testing and fine-tuning. Some of the features that are set to come in the new release are as follows:

Full set of Red/View widgets support

Draw & Shape dialects full support

Compatibility with Android GUI themes

Device-independent coordinate system

Updated APK building toolchain for targeting API 23+ Android systems

Improved ARM backend, support for ARMv7+ Android support

Red has also released a roadmap for the upcoming releases which shows that v0.7 is going to be an important milestone for Android development with Red. Apart from the work in Android, Red has been concentrating on the Blockchain-related wave of tasks, Full I/O, among other high-priority milestones.

As of now, Red v0.6.4 has been released on the GitHub repository. The community is still considering a 0.6.5 release, to insert a small extra milestone before going into the 0.7 release.