How to work on the Android port of Simon Tatham's Portable Puzzle Collection
============================================================================

...without writing any code
---------------------------

Good bug reports and well-thought-out feature suggestions are always helpful.
The issue tracker is:
http://github.com/chrisboyle/sgtpuzzles/issues

Simon has an excellent page on how to write a good bug report:
http://www.chiark.greenend.org.uk/~sgtatham/bugs.html

Translation efforts are in progress at:
http://www.getlocalization.com/android_puzzles/
(I did *not* choose their country names...)

Coders should read on...

Prerequisites
-------------

Some knowledge of Android Development and/or C, and ideally JNI, depending
on what you want to work on: the puzzles themselves are in C, most
Android-specific code is in Java, and JNI (Java Native Interface) is the
API bridge between the two.

If you have the option, a Linux-based development machine, as I haven't
tried to build on Windows or OSX, and it will need some tweaks.

Android SDK
http://developer.android.com/sdk/
...and its dependencies: http://developer.android.com/sdk/installing.html

Android NDK (Native Development Kit)
http://developer.android.com/sdk/ndk/

Your life will be easiest if the above two are at (or are symlinked at)
/opt/android-sdk and /opt/android-ndk , otherwise edit the paths later.

Either Eclipse...
http://eclipse.org/downloads/ ("Java Developers" or "Classic" recommended)
+ http://developer.android.com/sdk/eclipse-adt.html (Android Dev Tools)
+ http://www.eclipse.org/cdt/  (C/C++ Dev Tools)
+ http://www.eclipse.org/egit/ (optional: use Eclipse as a git client)

...or Ant:
http://ant.apache.org/ (or "apt-get install ant")

...and I probably missed a few things. File a bug when you find them. :-)

Getting/configuring the source
------------------------------

The source lives at http://github.com/chrisboyle/sgtpuzzles - you can
either clone/download it from there, or make your own fork on github
(the Fork button near the top right). A fork means you can easily send
me a "pull request" of your change, and I can review and integrate it,
all within github.

You'll also find a branch called "upstream", which is Simon's code whenever
I last synced. Handy for diffs, to see what I broke on Android. :-)

If your SDK/NDK aren't in my suggested locations, add a file local.properties
to override the locations in build.properties. If using Eclipse, also edit
the paths in:

Project / Properties / Builders / NDK builder
Project / Properties / C/C++ General / Paths and Symbols / Includes / GNU C

You should now be able to edit, build and launch the app like any other Android
project (except a lot of it is in C). Don't forget that you'll be signing with
a dev key, so to test on a device that already has the Market version,
uninstall that first.

Architecture / where to find stuff
----------------------------------

Simon has some excellent docs here:
http://www.chiark.greenend.org.uk/~sgtatham/puzzles/devel/

Go and read those, at least the Introduction.

The Android front-end (android.c) is basically just glue, passing everything to
Java. The Java classes providing the UI layer, game chooser, crash handler,
etc. are in "src".  The main class SGTPuzzles has the native methods that
android.c implements. The game area on screen is a GameView, which basically
just has a bitmap for the puzzle to draw on. Note that almost no native code is
run until the user has chosen a game (unless there's a previous game to
resume).

The original build system for all the other platforms, before I recently
"simplified" (broke/ignored) it for Android, uses "mkfiles.pl" and "Recipe" to
produce Makefiles (e.g.  Makefile.osx for OSX) among other things. "Makefile"
(no extension) is for Linux/GTK. So to check you haven't broken a game on
another platform, run ./mkfiles.pl (once) and make (or make -f Makfile.foo) to
build the other platform's binaries.

If your change is relevant to other platforms, you should definitely ping Simon
about it as well as me, but test on at least one other platform first (see
above).

Major changes e.g. adding a game
--------------------------------

At this level you especially need to think carefully about other platforms.
One of the best features of this collection is its relative consistency across
different environments, and the Android port should continue that.

If adding a game, definitely read the relevant chaper (6) of Simon's
development docs, and also re-run mkfiles.pl, and add the new game to the
places I've gone and duplicated the list just for Android...

jni/Android.mk
res/values/arrays.xml
res/values*/strings.xml
Eclipse: Project / Properties / Builders / NDK builder / Build Options / Specify Resources
.gitignore
icons/Makefile (actually that one was Simon)
...then add icons/foo.sav, cd icons && make (on a Linux box with GTK)


Happy hacking! :-)

--Chris Boyle