Hacker News new | past | comments | ask | show | jobs | submit login

It seems likely that this new runtime won't work with apps that use the NDK. Three reasons come to my mind:

1. The NDK assumes a Linux environment, which the NaCl sanbox is not.

2. Binaries compiled with the NDK don't meet the special requirements of the NaCl machine code verifier.

3. A lot of NDK-based apps only build the native components for ARM. These wouldn't work on x86 Chromebooks, including the Pixel.




Two of the applications mentioned in the announcement (Vine and Sight Words) use NDK.


Since there are already x86 emulators in JavaScript, surely Google could implement an ARM emulator running Linux and the Android NDK stack in (P)NaCl? :)


They already have an ARM emulator: The Android emulator. Those who have suffered through it's excruciating performance presumably wouldn't wish that on their worst enemy..


They use qemu in system mode for full-stack emulation, which is, indeed, has performance issues. They may use it in user mode, like shown here: http://tuxthink.blogspot.ru/2012/04/executing-arm-executable... (a first link Google gave me), and implement most of Android APIs in platform-native way not bearing the arm->x86 translation costs. Such approach may provide reasonably better performance.




Guidelines | FAQ | Lists | API | Security | Legal | Apply to YC | Contact

Search: