Interest in Elixir Mobile Framework?

For anyone coming here in the future the best bet is to use Elixir Desktop for mobile.

Actually I like the idea of Scenic. If we can do one super app together, than contains scenic, elixir, erlang and some native control all in one, so the community can distribute their own applet via hex.pm in source form. So this super app will access hex.pm, browse available scenic apps and download compile and play the app.

If we have that, before long we will have silly games mushroom all over!

I’ve been working in React Native for a while (too long)… I would like sort of a drop in replacement for that. It’s possible you need to be Facebook or Google to pull it off but RubyMotion gives me hope.

A similar vision that @boydm has for Scenic. It should work with or without a server.

Also, I definitely want the BEAM for the same reason you’d want the BEAM in embedded. That’s kind of the point. I want to be able to run an Elixir node on the phone.

Yes. If you don’t need to change the aspect ratio, then that is the approach I would take.

Reading some of the other responses though, I (without knowing anything about what you are trying to build…) would look at phoenix/LiveView first as well. It might not fit the scenario tho!

I was in touch with someone that used to be involved in RubyMotion. Here’s their contribution:

I think the challenges are:

1. Exposing the native APIs (ObjC/Swift for iOS and Java/Kotlin for Android) to Elixir/Erlang. For that, you might need the ability to interface at the C level from Erlang, and be able to export the native APIs (for the case of Java, you could do that using JNI, this is how I did for RubyMotion/Android). You will need a way to tell the native world in case you start subclassing things from Erlang. In RubyMotion, I fixed that by reusing the native object system to Ruby (so that a Ruby class would always be an ObjC/Java class), if you use an existing Erlang runtime you will need to work on a bridge.

2. Being able to package the binary so that it can be submitted to the app stores. In the case of iOS, you will need the ability to code sign, and also you will need an Erlang runtime that does not JIT; last time I looked the official runtime has a simple interpreter? (So it might not be an issue.)

3. Probably other things that I can’t think of right now.

If I had to do it, I would look for an Erlang runtime that’s not too big and can be embedded; I believe I saw a few projects but you surely know more. I would also look for a runtime that I can easily tweak, so that I could interface it with ObjC/Swift and Java (through JNI).

Seems doable albeit not easy.

So if I don’t need to change aspect ratio, can I dynamically change the scaling factor and center the scene and live with letterboxing or scrolling now?

I think if you built an elixir equivalent of React Native, a very many people would be interested! I would say the best approach (for now) is don’t try to get the BEAM on these devices, just take the LiveView approach; and figure out how to handle the “no-connection” situation later.

You could look at the approach that RubyMotion took. It’s a complete Ruby implementation on top of iOS and Android and compiles down to native code. You can use all the iOS or Android SDK and third-party libraries (depending on which platform your app is running on) plus all the Ruby standard library functions that were ported over, plus any cross-platform RubyMotion-specific third-party gems. I’ve written iOS apps in Objective-C, Android apps in Java, and iOS+Android apps in RubyMotion and I definitely prefer RubyMotion.

If you have a lot of time, you could try doing the same with Elixir

Well… there are two hurdles. I think the harder one is just getting the BEAM running at all. Although I haven’t paid too much attention over the past year (been working on a different port)…

After that …

I have a feeling the glfw driver might just work. Maybe? Decent odds of it

Hi Boyd! Thanks for chipping in. I really like Scenic. Kudos for that.

I know in Android and iOS you can query the OS for the screen size so this is kind of what I’m counting on. I’d be over the moon if this was the biggest hurdle. I suspect just getting it to work (reliably) will be perhaps the most difficult.

@boydm Where would you start with getting it to work? I see some positive indications using Android NDK as well as being able to use imported C libs (possible to bring the BEAM in?) in Android and iOS. There are also cross platform build tools like Boden.