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That's an important point, and easy to demonstrate. | 380 comments | Create New Account
Comments belong to whoever posts them. Please notify us of inappropriate comments.
That's an important point, and easy to demonstrate.
Authored by: Anonymous on Thursday, May 24 2012 @ 01:01 PM EDT
You do not require the source code, only the class files. The android build process is not monolithic, the dex module, which converts java bytecode to dalvik bytecode can be run on class files without source.

Furthermore, tha Android build process and the dex tool is designed to allow developers to include 3rd party jar libraries without source code into their applications.

This inclusion is a bytecode variation of static linking c-style, the included & converted library is packaged within the Android App's apk.

[ Reply to This | Parent | # ]

That's an important point, and easy to demonstrate.
Authored by: Anonymous on Friday, May 25 2012 @ 08:56 AM EDT
If started from the UI, but as you point out, that isn't the only way to start an application on Android, the main method can still be invoked. This would be true if there was no way to invoke the main method of a Java class from Android, but there is.

Its years since I did any Java, but when I did I was targeting both stand- alone applications and browser-embedded apps. These had different startup protocols, but it was trivial to support both modes with the same code.

Any sensibly-designed application will consist of a multitude of classes and class hierarchies, of which only a very few are concerned with startup. Being able to re-use 99% of the code is a pretty strong reason for wanting a compatible API.

[ Reply to This | Parent | # ]

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