Re: Options for using LilyPond in an Android app

[David Kastrup]

Barton Stanley <address@hidden> writes:

> Hello,
> I've been asked by a friend to create a mobile app that displays sheet
> music in an alternative notation.  While it would be a blast to figure
> out how to do the engraving from scratch myself, I'd like to show
> progress quickly so I am looking at what my options are.  LilyPond
> appears to be the most comprehensive system but it does not appear to
> be available for iOS or Android.
> What are my options for using LilyPond in an Android app?
> BTW, I am a highly skilled developer with over 30 years of
> experience.  If using LilyPond in Android will require some highly
> technical work, I am fully capable to take on the challenge.

Not sure about how comparable the average Android runtime is to
GNU/Linux.  The "straight" way to do this would be to add Android to the
systems supported by GUB <http://www.lilypond.org/gub>.  Since LilyPond
has a large number of dependencies, hooking into this cross-system
compile architecture is likely to be the easiest path to a _sustainable_
port of LilyPond.

For a one-time effort, you can likely instead try to just make a native
port and satisfy all build and runtime dependencies manually.

If I take at the ongoing investment of developer hours into Git on
Windows as compared to LilyPond on Windows, the cross-compiled GUB port
seems like a much better bet in the long run.

It's also going to be the quite larger challenge, but success will last
for a long time.

-- 
David Kastrup