Write C programs that can access the Android API

Most Android programs are written in Java. The major exception is SL4A, "Scripting Languages for Android", which ships quite a few different scripting languages and a simplified Android API.

sl4a-C, the library described here, adds C to the list of languages supported by SL4A.

A neat side effect of this is that, as with the other SL4A languages, you can also use sl4a-C to compile programs on your host computer and access the SL4A API over a USB cable or network.

If you want to try it out, check out android-cruft from subversion, and check out the README.txt and INSTALL.txt for more details on how it works and how to compile it for Android or Linux.

Static Type Checking

As with the other SL4A languages, the low-level interface doesn't know what methods are available or how to call them; you have to look it up on the SL4A API page: http://code.google.com/p/android-scripting/wiki/ApiReference

If you call a method incorrectly, you won't know it until you try to make the call and the SL4A server sends back an error.

But sl4a-c also has a listing of all the available SL4A calls in api-listing.txt, with a shorthand notation for return and argument types. generate-api.pl reads that file and generates sl4a-wrapper.c and .h.

Using the high level sl4a-wrapper, you can see all the functions available and get compile-time errors if you attempt to misuse them.