Windows developers looking to build Android apps can now do so in Visual Studio, thanks to the Android++ extension.
Justin Webb, lead Android programmer at NaturalMotion (a game company based in Oxford, England), created Android++ to give Android—the largest and fastest-growing mobile platform—access to Microsoft’s dedicated IDE and native source-level debugging to increase coherence in developing C/C++ applications.
(Android’s growth projected into 2015)
“Large numbers of developers worldwide use Visual Studio as their primary IDE, either by preference, or other external factors,” Webb wrote on the Android++ website. “The goal of Android++ is to assist and transition those developers to target the Android platform by providing the ability for them to use their existing skills and working practices.”
Android++ is a free extension that includes MSBuild scripts, enabling Android app development in Visual Studio. Designed primarily for C/C++ applications built with the Android NDK toolkit, the extension has additional features such as integrated Java source compilation and customizable deployment and compiler options.
The Android++ version 0.1.0 beta for Windows can be found here.
