Will Google Android ever support .NET? [closed]

Question

Now that the G1 with Google's Android OS is now available (soon), will the android platform ever support .Net?

Answer 1

.NET for Android seems like a real possibility to me. There is news that Microsoft will release proper Silverlight for Android- Never underestimate the advantages to Microsoft for putting the boot into Apple. A smartphone that is faster, more feature rich, faster development lifecycle, impressive hardware, Flash & Silverlight as a standard installable.

Microsoft has a vested interest in improving Android, and at the same time, applications will be devloped for Silverlight on Android will also work on Windows Phone 7 OS with multi-touch, GPS, etc., etc.

Answer 2

In my opinion, it would be technically possible to convert the CLI Bytecode to Dalvik, and to write wrapper classes for some core features such as Collections, File access, etc., even it would be hard work.

But a .NET desktop application ran on android would feel alien, as it would have a classic Windows-Like GUI which is not very usable on a touch device. If, on the other hand, you were to code an android-like GUI in .NET, you would need another set of wrappers (notice that wrapping is just the other way round opposed to the wrappers mentioned above).

I'm not sure if a .NET mobile application would feel native on android, but I'd guess it wouldn't.

Maybe you're interestend in another approach: You can write your application in the Java language. You can then compile it to .NET via Microsoft J# (I know it's discontinued but you can still download and use it) and use the same Java code on android. Again, that's for the core classes aka business logic and again you would have to write tow GUIs. Maybe you can tages J2ME as well, which you will not be able to do if you use .NET.

Answer 3

Miguel de Icaza's announced on his blog on the 17th of Feb 2010 that they are starting work on mono for android which will be called MonoDroid.

This will be similar to MonoTouch on the iphone but for android instead.

It will provide binding to the android UI, so apps will look and feel live native android apps. This will require you to write an android specific UI.

You will however be able to reuse you existing lower level libraries without the need to recompile.

Answer 4

There is Mono for Android, the .NET framework ported for Android. And there is MonoDroid, a development stack for using C# and the core .NET APIs to develop Android-based applications. MonoDroid Preview 1 has been released a couple of days ago.

Answer 5

Since this is one of the first links on Google when search for Android and .net support, it is only fitting to post this here.

The mono project is working on a SDK to develop Android applications using CIL languages such as C#. The down side is it will be a commercial product. monodroid

Answer 6

You're more likely to see an Android implementation of Silverlight. Microsoft rep has confirmed that it's possible, vs. the iPhone where the rep said it was problematic.

But a version of the .Net framework is possible. Just need someone to care about it that much :)

But really, moving from C# to Java isn't that big of a deal and considering the drastic differences between the two platforms (PC vs. G1) it seems unlikely that you'd be able to get by with one codebase for any app that you wanted to run on both.