What about HarmonyOS?

[inson1]

Will there be support?

[thevortexcloud]

It sounds like it supports android apps? In which case it probably already works.

[inson1]

@thevortexcloud no it cant https://www.gizchina.com/2023/11/21/how-huawei-plans-to-keep-android-app-support-for-global-users/

[thevortexcloud]

It can right now. The version that drops android support is not even getting a dev preview until next year.

In any case, unless it supports .NET and Skia there is not much anybody can do to get it running on the future release.

[kyuranger]

I'm sure it supports Skia because it supports Flutter (but support for HarmonyOS is maintained by huawei not Google). But I haven't heard of relevant support for .Net, but Unity does support it, but I'm not sure whether Unity's .Net and the .Net we often talk about are the same thing.

[thevortexcloud]

Unity uses a heavily modified version of Mono. It's not really meant to be used as a general runtime. Unity also has a .NET transpiler that converts .NET code to C++/native code. Although they are trying to move away from Mono.

In any case, Avalonia still needs a compatible .NET runtime. If someone ports Mono to it (or it already works?), Avalonia will probably also work to some extent.

[kyuranger]

I remember reading an official Avalonia article before, saying that it is easier for Avalonia to be compatible with new platforms than other frameworks. As long as that framework supports image display, it can easily connect to Avalonia's display interface. So I think it's not that Avalonia can't do it (just like when Vison OS just came out, Avalonia quickly supported it), but whether the Avalonia team has the energy to be compatible with one more platform.

As far as I know, HarmonyOS is currently only supported by Flutter (not officially supported by Google), Unity, and Huawei's official framework. If Avalonia supports it, that would be a good thing, but I personally think that based on various issues such as HarmonyOS market share, it is unlikely to attract the Avalonia team to support it.

[thevortexcloud]

As long as that framework supports image display,

It's more complicated than that. The platform needs to allow for directly drawing pixels to the screen, as Avalonia is a drawn control framework. Typically this is done via Skia. But it's possible to wire up a different backend. The platform also needs to support .NET/be compatible with .NET AOT, ideally Skia, and support some sort of user input (EG touch/mouse and keyboard). Vision OS specifically is directly compatible with iOS apps. So it's not much of a leap to get apps working on it as Avalonia already supports iOS (as does .NET).

In any case, HarmonyOS can currently run android apps. So Avalonia should already work on it.

[kyuranger]

Compatibility with Android is just a way for Huawei to gain market share for HarmonyOS. As its market share gradually increases, it will gradually develop a system based on Android, but it will be very different from Android. It's somewhat similar to the relationship between Unix and iOS. So I think Avalonia supports Android, but as HarmonyOS begins not to support Android applications, it does not mean that Avalonia can support HarmonyOS. Of course, it is meaningless how we talk about this. What is important is what the Avalonia team thinks (even though I don't think the Avalonia team will give any reply on this topic).

[dongfo]

Even if the Avalonia view rendering can run on the HarmonyOS, it would be meaningless if the dotnet itself cannot call the HarmonyOS Api

[kyuranger]

It seems that HarmonyOS is developed based on Android, so I think support should not be a big problem.

[996666925]

No, there is no relationship between HarmonyOS and Android

[bxjg1987]

Now (November 2024) HarmonyOS is a completely independent system, unrelated to Android. This system has received strong support from the Chinese government, and its market prospects in mainland China are very good. It would be great if Avalonia could support it.
It also has an open-source version of OpenHarmonyOS.

[kekekeks]

Given that harmony uses Node internally, you can try to get this to work too - https://github.com/sanosdole/nodeclrhost

[CeSun]

For render timer you probably need to reuse UiThreadRenderTimer initially, since multithreaded rendering is usually a tricky part to get right

Some controls are rendered successfully (TextBlock, Image, Rectangle, etc.), but controls like TextBox, Button, etc. will cause the sk_canvas_flush call to crash.

[thevortexcloud]

I am not an expert on Skia/Avalonia, but this looks like some GPU problem? I could be completely wrong though. But if it is, it's entirely possible the problem is outside your code. A lot of graphics drivers, especially on mobile devices are supposedly extremely broken/barely functional. You could try some sort of software renderer, either in Avalonia or in the OS (EG forcing a software rendering graphics library).

[CeSun]

I am not an expert on Skia/Avalonia, but this looks like some GPU problem? I could be completely wrong though. But if it is, it's entirely possible the problem is outside your code. A lot of graphics drivers, especially on mobile devices are supposedly extremely broken/barely functional. You could try some sort of software renderer, either in Avalonia or in the OS (EG forcing a software rendering graphics library).

Great! I switched to software rendering and it worked fine! But I still have to investigate why skiasharp crashes when using opengl as the backend.

Many thanks

[thevortexcloud]

Glad I could help. Avalonia does also have a Vulkan renderer which might be of use.

#12737

But I still have to investigate why skiasharp crashes when using opengl as the backend.

My guess is either a SkiaSharp bug or bad GPU drivers. OpenGL on mobile is also typically a subset of the full OpenGL spec.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/OpenGL_ES

It's entirely possible Skia is expecting the full OpenGL APIs to be available (since it thinks its on Linux) and HarmonyOS has not implemented it. But your guess is as good as mine as to what the real problem is.