The DragonLace.net project, who’re responsible for bringing the GNAT AUX Ada compiler to the *BSD users, are hard at work on enabling Ada programmers to build software for Android devices without having to touch Java, or as John Marino said in a recent comp.lang.ada post on the subject:
It would be a nice project for someone to blaze the trail on writing Native Android phone/table applications without any Java. This is possible from Android 2.3 onwards using the “NativeActivity” functionality provided with the Android Native Development Kit (NDK). The API require C bindings, but it shouldn’t be too difficult.
More information is available at the DragonLace.net website, specifically these two articles:
This is in my humble opinion both very good and very exciting news! I am currently involved in the development of an Android application, and I would personally have loved if it could’ve been done in Ada instead of Java.
I know some of the Ada-DK members have Android devices (myself included), so perhaps we should spend a few open Ada-DK meetings on testing this stuff? Could be both a learning and fun experience.
Yes, I’m looking forward to building apps for Android written in Ada, too. I tried Java, and find Java too restrictive and cumbersome. Even the GO programming is much easier than Java.
Really hope some breakthroughs into this will come true soon.
In the meantime, you could take a look at my hands-on tutorial which uses the compiler solution from John Marino.
http://rveenker.home.xs4all.nl/Ada%20on%20Android.html
I don’t believe there’s been any compiler from Ada to the JVM for a long time, but if you wanted to compile Ada for Android, wouldn’t that be a better solution? There’s MIPS Androids out now, so ARM compilers will limit your market.