Introduction

LambdaNative is an open-source (BSD licensed) cross-platform development environment written in Scheme (Gambit-C), supporting Android, iOS, OS X, Linux, Windows and OpenBSD.

LambdaNative is actively developed and used at the University of British Columbia by the Pediatric Anesthesia Research Team for production of clinical mHealth applications, including mission-critical embedded drug delivery systems and telemonitoring apps for iPhone and Android smartphones. LambdaNative-based applications have been used in clinical trials on >10,000 subjects in Canada, France, India, Uganda, Bangladesh, and South Africa, in >10 separate clinical studies:

Petersen CL, Görges M, Dunsmuir D, Ansermino JM, Dumont GA. "Experience Report: Functional Programming of mHealth Applications". The 18th ACM SIGPLAN International Conference on Functional Programming, ICFP'13, Boston, MA, USA

If you use the LambdaNative framework for your own work, please reference this paper.

A slideshow describing the LambdaNative framework is available here.

uSquish, the simple example game included in the LambdaNative repository, is available as a free download on the Apple and Google stores:

uSquish for iOS

uSquish for Android

Getting started

Required SDKs

The minimum requirement for developing applications is the presence of a working gcc compiler. In addition, cross-compilation requires installation of the appropriate environments:

Android (mac or linux)

Install the android SDK and NDK under /usr/local and the API that you want to develop for.

iOS (mac)

Install the iOS SDK under /Developer to develop iOS applications.

Linux cross-compilation (mac)

Install a linux cross-compiler under /usr/local to create linux binaries.

Windows cross-compiler (mac or linux)

Install a windows cross-compiler under /usr/local to create windows binaries.

Windows development environment

If you are developing on a windows machine (not recommended), install the MSYS development environment.

Required tools

A number of tools are needed to support the framework. Please ensure that these are installed on your system:

• wget for pulling library code from the net
• freetype for rendering vector fonts
• netpbm and ImageMagick for misc pixmap manipulation
• ghostscript for converting vector artwork
• cmake for generating XCode projects
• latex for generating string textures (actually uses the unicode xelatex)
• tgif for editing vector artwork (optional)
• fruitstrap for installing iOS apps (optional)

SETUP and PROFILE

Use the provided SETUP.template and PROFILE.template to create files SETUP and PROFILE in the framework directory matching your setup.

First build

To start using the framework, type:

./configure DemoHelloWorld
make

this will take a while, as the supporting libraries are downloaded and compiled for the first time. On completion, you will have a binary for your local host.

On a suitably configured platform, you can now do:

./configure DemoHelloWorld android
make

./configure DemoHelloWorld ios
make

and binaries for the specified platforms will be built and packaged.

Directory structure

apps/                       applications
libraries/                  supporting libraries
modules/                    application modules
modules/config              application configuration
modules/eventloop           event handling for GUI applications
modules/ln_core             general supporting functions
modules/ln_glcore           low level OpenGL wrapper
modules/ln_glgui            widget based GUI
modules/ln_audio            cross-platform audio handling
bootstraps/                 platform launchers
tools/pngtools              png texture generator
tools/ttftools              ttf texture generator