I want to ask about Android Studio. What is the recommended Minimum SDK for this 2021, I'm currently using api target SDK 31? And how to determine the best Minimum SDK for current latest api? whether browsing on the internet or asking in forums?
The minimum SDK is the minimum version of Android your app will support. If you would like to support older phones, you should set your minimum SDK level lower, and if you want to reduce code complexity and only support newer phones, you can go with a higher SDK level.
The numbers correspond with android versions.
I would personally recommend supporting Android 5.1+ (minimum SDK of 22) if you do not know where to start, as compatibility with android 4 gets tricky.
Related
I'm testing a script to build a shared object from the command line. According to NDK Downloads, the latest download is android-ndk-r10e (I thought this was an old download).
However, when I check for android-23 I see there's nothing available:
$ echo "$ANDROID_NDK_ROOT"
/opt/android-ndk-r10e
$ ls "$ANDROID_NDK_ROOT/platforms"
android-12 android-15 android-18 android-3 android-8
android-13 android-16 android-19 android-4 android-9
android-14 android-17 android-21 android-5
Is the NDK for Android 6.0, which I believe is android-23, not available? Or maybe something else I don't quite understand.
(I'm concerned about the major version bump, and the breaking changes it encompasses, like when the rand function was changed and broke things).
There are no new native APIs in 6.0, so there is no need to have that target available in the NDK - it would be identical to the ones for 5.1 and 5.0.
When building with the NDK, the target platform is picked as the latest one that actually exists prior to the one you've chosen to target (and the earliest one, for ABIs that were introduced later).
Keep in mind that "target API" behaves quite differently between Java and native code. If you build your native code with one target API level, chances are that the code won't run on older versions at all - see e.g. https://stackoverflow.com/a/27338365/3115956 and https://stackoverflow.com/a/27093163/3115956.
So unless you want to try to manually load and use new functionality on some platforms if available, you should just set the target version (APP_PLATFORM in jni/Application.mk) to the lowest version that you want your code to run on, i.e. corresponding to minSdkVersion.
From my understanding, the NDK is in a separate "stream" of development with releases less or more frequent than the Android platform itself. You should be able to develop a NDK app for android-23 devices without any problem, Google probably just did not have time yet to update the NDK release for android-23.
Looking at the revisions, r10e was released a while ago, but the truth is that it is also the latest version as of today.
I have both Visual Studio 2012 Express for Desktop and for Windows 8, and I wanted to create Direct X applications and games. I know that there is a Windows SDK now, and in VS 2012 exp for win8 the IDE is pre-installed with the SDK (I know that from the new Direct3D project). My question is, if I wanted to develop applications for Windows Desktop (using VS2012exp) does it come Windows SDK or do I need to install Direct X SDK? And how do I know if my graphics card support which version of Direct X? Will any Direct X SDK version work with any Direct X version? As you can see I am a newbie at that stuff and any comment would be helpful. Thanks for your time.
If I wanted to develop applications for Windows
Desktop (using VS2012exp) does it come Windows SDK or do I need to
install Direct X SDK?
Yes, with Windows 8 SDK and Visual Studio 2012 (or Windows 8.1 SDK and Visual Studio 2013 preview) you can develop anything:
DirectX applications (both, Windows Desktop and Windows Store)
for any supported target platform (x86, x64, ARM)
for any reasonably modern Windows operating system (starting from Windows 2000/XP)
using any of API versions: DirectX 9.3, 10.0, 10.1, 11.0, or 11.1
Note:
DirectX 9 API is completely different from 10 and 11, and it is obsolete. Use it only if you targeting Windows versions below Vista.
DirectX 11 is more like an improved version of DirectX 10.
So in most cases, you will want to program for DirectX 11.1.
And no, you don't need to install DirectX SDK. It was deprecated (latest version - june 2010). Do not use it in new code. Use it only if you need to compile some old code which uses D3DX stuff (such as ID3DXEffect, ID3DXFont, ID3DXLine, ID3DXMesh, ID3DXSprite), e.g. samples from books or different SDK samples.
And how do I know if my graphics card support which version of Direct
X?
Well, if we talking about your videocard, you can look at your card vendor's or GPU vendor's site. Or any of informational utilities, such as GPU-Z.
If we talking about end-user hardware, since DirectX 10-11 there are feature levels. So even if you are using latest API (DirectX 11.1 at this moment), you can target old hardware (for example, if you using D3D_FEATURE_LEVEL_9_3, newer features, from D3D_FEATURE_LEVEL_10_0 and higher will be disabled).
Note, that to develop for latest feature level you don't need GPU that supports it. You can run and debug application on WARP device (ivery slow and meant for debugging purposes only, not for end-user release). For example, you can have old DirectX 10 card (Shader model 4.0), but target to DirectX 11 (Shader model 5.0)
Will any Direct X SDK version work with any Direct X version?
Latest DirectX SDK (june 2010) supports DirectX up to 11. No DirectX 11.1 support.
I'm a developer in Visual Studio who works with the DirectX tooling (the DX Diagnostic Tool and on the new project templates). You're asking a few different questions in here, but I'll try my best to answer the ones that I can.
1 - What SDKs are needed for DX application development? This link here as the best information on this. Basically as of the June 2010 DirectX SDK the DX SDK was combined with the Windows development SDK so if you install the most recent Windows SDK you'll have the right stuff for developing the newest DX applications.
http://blogs.msdn.com/b/chuckw/archive/2013/07/01/where-is-the-directx-sdk-2013-edition.aspx
This link also has more indepth info specific to the issue of DX Desktop apps on Windows 8.
http://blogs.msdn.com/b/chuckw/archive/2012/03/23/desktop-games-on-windows-8-consumer-preview.aspx
Note here that you can also install the June 2010 DirectX SDK on your machine, that won't hurt anything, we often install it ourselves as it has some useful sample applications to look at even if they are a bit outdated.
http://www.microsoft.com/en-pk/download/details.aspx?id=6812
2 - How do I know what my graphics card supports? I'm not sure if you mean how do I detect this in my DX application at runtime? Or if you mean how do I just look it up quickly for my specific system. To figure out your own GPU it's usually a pretty quick lookup, just find your device name and punch it in online, most stuff released in the last several years supports DX11 so you should be fine here. If you installed the June 2010 SDK that I mentioned above you can use the capability tool mentioned here:
http://www.danielmoth.com/Blog/What-DX-Level-Does-My-Graphics-Card-Support-Does-It-Go-To-11.aspx
At runtime DX has code to use to check if the running graphics card has the ability to use advanced DX 11 features.
http://msdn.microsoft.com/en-us/library/windows/desktop/hh404562(v=vs.85).aspx#check_support_of_new_direct3d_11.1_features_and_formats
http://msdn.microsoft.com/en-us/library/windows/desktop/ff476876(v=vs.85).aspx
3 - Will any DirectX SDK work with any DX version? So here you basically always want to be using the latest DX SDK as you could see with the link on feature levels above you can target lower levels of DX while still coding using the most recent SDK. Just use the most recent SDK and target feature level 9 if you wanted to create apps that run on DX 9 cards.
Now that the upcoming Mono version includes EF4, are the imminent plans to include it in MonoTouch and Mono for Android?
For Android, the chances that we include it are very high, as Android can run the entire CLR. On iOS the situation is more complicated, as there are various limitations imposed by the iOS kernel that prevent some forms of generics code from running.
Additionally, all of the EF work runs on top of Mono 2.11, while both mobile products are based on a much older codebase, so any upgrade will have to wait until both products are rebased on top of the upcoming Mono 2.12, and that wont happen until December or so.
I have got an application developed with Monotouch 4.0.7. This app is running on iPads with iOS 4.3.
Now, I want to migrate to the latest Monotouch version is 5.0. Will I be able to deploy my app on iPads with iOS 4.3? Or Monotouch 5.0 only for iOS 5.0?
Yes, it is possible to develop for iOS 4.3 (or even earlier iOS versions) with MonoTouch 5.0.
To set the minimum iOS version your app needs, go to the project's options, and in the iPhone Application page set Deployment Target to the minimum version.
Have in mind that MonoTouch will not tell you if you use iOS 5.0 API in your app. You can add iOS 5.0 features to your app, but you must not try to use those features on a lower version (here you can see how to accomplish this).
You can upgrade to Monotouch 5.x without any problems. In Monodevelop, change your SDK to 5.x
Just make sure your deployment target remains 4.3, if you still want to target that platform.
You will have to pay attention to not calling any methods that don't exist in 4.3.
If you want to have different/extended behavior on iOS 5 devices, you can check the OS version and use a different code branch.
Another small thing to be prepared for: iOS5 behaves differently in some situations. For instance if you are having hierarchical UIViewControllers, iOS5 will automatically call all UI events like ViewWillAppear(), even if you don't use the new UIViewControllery hierachy API.
What I want to say: test your app thoroughly on both iOS versions.
To continue in my post-XCode 4 upgrade confusion, i came across this....
My Build Settings has Base SDK as iOS 4.3.
Now back in XCode 3.x days I remember 2 things:
The Base SDK was always set to iOS 4.0.
The target device was set to iphone 3.0 (to ensure greatest iphone audience).
What consequence is there for this Base SDK?
I mean, if SDK 4.0 provides support for features that only iOS4/iPhone4) provides, then why are these two separate build settings?
You can choose iOS 4.0 as your base SDK, but as long as you do not use APi's that are 4.0 and up your code should run on 3.x unless you used apis that were only in 3.2 and so on =)
Always a good thing to check the availability of methods when you look in the class reference.
I recommend using 4.x stuff.. because the people that use 3.0 are not worth supporting ( Only the really old devices are still running that, iPhone 1 -- most users have upgraded by now to an iPhone 3Gs or 4 ), the features you get in 4.x, including GCD are awesome.