Ferrante is a locative app for Android. It provides you with a link which you then send to a friend via instant message, SMS, etc. Your friend clicks on the link, and if he accepts then your phones will show arrows pointing at the other person's location.
Instead of the Java programming language, it's written in Mirah, a newer language that's very fast and lightweight but offers some advanced features still lacking in Java.
There is also a small server-side web service under server/ (also written in Mirah) that runs on the Google App Engine to act as an mediator between the two devices since they generally cannot communicate directly.
You'll need the Android SDK installed. Run tools/android and look under "Available packages" for "Android Repository". Choose "SDK Platform Android 2.2, revision 8" and the newest "Android SDK Platform-tools". Add the tools/ and platform-tools/ directories on your $PATH. For the time being you will also need ant 1.8. On 64-bit systems you may need to install 32-bit compatibility libraries (ia32-libs on Ubuntu) as some of the Android tools don't ship with 64-bit versions.
Finally be sure to have at least version 1.6 RC1 of JRuby installed with bin/ on your $PATH. If your gem and rake are not from from JRuby, prefix the gem and rake commands with jruby -S:
$ gem install pindah
Then you can create an apk:
$ rake debug
This will place Ferrante-debug.apk in bin, which you can install if your device is connected or your emulator is running:
$ adb install -r bin/Ferrante-debug.apk
# or if you want to rebuild and install at the same time:
$ rake install
If you're running the emulator, you can fake out the GPS:
$ adb emu geo fix 43.0 -122.1
For more details see Pindah, a tool for Mirah Android apps.
Have fun!
Copyright (C) 2010-2011 Phil Hagelberg
This program is free software; you can redistribute it and/or modify it under the terms of the GNU General Public License as published by the Free Software Foundation; either version 3 of the License, or (at your option) any later version.
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