Can a Gluon Mobile project automatically download and include libCharm.a? - gluon-mobile

Question

I have written a small sample that makes use of com.gluonhq.charm.down.common.ScanService. It works as expected on a real iOS device, if I manually include the native library libCharm.a in src/ios/jniLibs. This is explained in the Gluon documentation of their GoNative app. If I am not mistaken, the library is built in the build.gradle file of Charm Down IOS.
Here is the build.gradle of my sample. As I have said, this leads to a fully working app if I copy libCharm.a manually to src/ios/jniLibs.
buildscript {
repositories {
jcenter()
}
dependencies {
classpath 'org.javafxports:jfxmobile-plugin:1.0.8'
}
}
apply plugin: 'org.javafxports.jfxmobile'
repositories {
jcenter()
maven {
url 'http://nexus.gluonhq.com/nexus/content/repositories/releases'
}
}
mainClassName = 'com.thomaskuenneth.scanservicedemo.ScanserviceDemo'
dependencies {
compile 'com.gluonhq:charm:3.0.0'
androidRuntime 'com.gluonhq:charm-android:3.0.0'
androidRuntime 'com.google.zxing:core:3.2.1'
iosRuntime 'com.gluonhq:charm-ios:3.0.0'
desktopRuntime 'com.gluonhq:charm-desktop:3.0.0'
}
jfxmobile {
apply plugin: 'idea'
idea.module.downloadJavadoc = true
android {
manifest = 'src/android/AndroidManifest.xml'
androidSdk = '/Users/thomas/Library/Android/sdk'
compileSdkVersion = 23
}
ios {
infoPList = file('src/ios/Default-Info.plist')
forceLinkClasses = [
'com.google.zxing.**.*',
'com.gluonhq.**.*',
'io.datafx.**.*',
'javax.annotations.**.*',
'javax.inject.**.*',
'javax.json.**.*',
'org.glassfish.json.**.*'
]
}
}
I tried to add a iosRuntime dependency to the latest version of charm-down-ios, but this seemed to have no effect. So, the question: is there a way to automatically get a libCharm.a that matches my specified dependencies or is the manual way (which, again, does work) the only one possible? Thank you very much in advance.

Answer 1

As of now there is no automatic tool for this included in the plugin that manages the proper installation of the native library, extracting it from the charm-down-ios.jar and moving it to the jniLibs library of the project. But it should be available in a future version of the plugin.
For now, you have to do it manually, as you mentioned, extracting the libCharm.a file from the charm-ios-3.0.0.jar that will be located on your local .m2 repository, and copying it into your project under src/ios/jniLibs.
I've come up with this task that will help you do it:
task extractNativeLib(type: Sync) {
def iosNativeDir = project.file(project.jfxmobile.ios.nativeDirectory)
if (!iosNativeDir.exists()) {
iosNativeDir.mkdirs()
}
setIncludeEmptyDirs(false)
from {
configurations.iosRuntime.collect { zipTree(it).matching { include 'native/**' } }
}
into iosNativeDir
eachFile {details -> details.path = details.name }
}
Run this task before calling launchIOSDevice, and it will extract the library and copy it into your native folder.
EDIT
Since the release of the javafxmobile plugin 1.1.0 (October 2016) there is no need for using this task, as the plugin will manage it.
For the Charm Down 3.0.0+ plugins included in the project, their native libraries will be automatically added to the build, as well as any other third party native library included in src/ios/jniLibs.