ARM releases free Android developer toolkit
ARM has released Development Studio 5 Community Edition (DS-5 CE), a toolkit for developing Android applications. The toolkit is distributed as a plug-in for the Eclipse development environment and can be used free of charge subject to certain restrictions – the community edition is aimed at individual developers and small businesses with a revenue below $100,000 and fewer than 10 employees.
According to ARM, the toolkit allows users to write native software for ARM-based Android devices that is up to four times faster than comparable Java code. The toolkit update extends Google's Android SDK and NDK (Software/Native Development Kit) to include debugging and optimisation tools that are designed to improve the behaviour and energy efficiency of Android apps written in C/C++.
The Community Edition includes essential features of the commercial edition of Development Studio. For example, developers will find a graphical debugger for code generated with the NDK. The kit also offers performance tuning tools, including a basic version of ARM's Streamline Performance Analyzer; this allows developers to identify and correct the causes of bottlenecks in their code. Further information can be found in the developer blog, which also offers installation instructions.
(ehe)