Deploying DNNE on Android devices.

[Michael-Waters]

Being utterly ignorant of Android development, we've been asked to deploy our DNNE-based tool on Android tablets. We have successfully compiled and deployed to both Windows and Linux (with your very-much-appreciated help): Should we expect the Linux version to function on Android as-is, or are there additional steps we need to take?

Michael Waters

[AaronRobinsonMSFT]

Hi @Michael-Waters This is going to be a journey for both of us. Technically DNNE should "just work", that isn't going to be the problem. The tricky bit will be ensuring that DNNE can find the deployed version of .NET and that the Android OS hasn't quarantined your application in a way that disallows file system access.

Here is how I would proceed:

• Deploy your non-.NET application to the Android device.
• Deploy the .NET runtime install to the Android device, ideally in a subdirectory of the non-.NET application.
• Set the DOTNET_ROOT environment variable with an absolute path to the location of the .NET runtime install directory (containing the dotnet binary).
• If the DOTNET_ROOT environment variable can't be set prior to the application running or Android doesn't permit that, then prior to loading/activating the .NET component via DNNE, set the DOTNET_ROOT environment variable for the process.
• When the generated DNNE export is entered it should call into the appropriate APIs to read from the DOTNET_ROOT environment variable and activate the .NET runtime.

Note the above can be experimented with on a non-Android device to ensure the mechanics work.