Genero mobile development client for Android

Set up a development environment to display app forms on an Android™ device.

Using the GMA front-end on Android devices

To display Genero application forms on an Android device in development mode (with programs executing on a computer), the GMA front-end app must be installed on the device (or emulator).

Note: With the GMA front-end installed on the mobile device, you can perform a classic GUI connection based on FGLSERVER.

Installing the GMA front-end application

Before installing the GMA front-end, fulfill the prerequisites to build an Android app, as described in Building Android apps with Genero.

Perform the following steps, to install the GMA front-end from the archive:
  1. Get the GMA package (for example, fjs-gma-1.30.00-build201703031626-allos.zip), contact your support channel for download details.
  2. Unzip the archive, containing an APK ready to install.
  3. Plug your device via USB cable to the computer.
  4. Install the GMA front-end APK with the gmabuildtool command with the test option.

For example:

$ . ~/genero/devel/fgl/mobile/java-1.8.env 
$ . ~/genero/devel/fgl/mobile/android-sdk.env 
$ mkdir /tmp/gma
$ cd /tmp/gma
$ unzip ~/Download/fjs-gma-1.30.00-build201703031626-allos.zip 
Archive:  ~/Download/fjs-gma-1.30.00-build201703031626-allos.zip
  ...
  inflating: fjs-gma-1.30.00-build201703031626.apk
  ...
$ gmabuildtool test --test-apk ./fjs-gma-1.30.00-build201703031626.apk
...

Configure FGLSERVER and run the app

Once the GMA front-end is installed on the device, make sure that WIFI is enabled (or check that the TCP port is forwarded when using an emulator), you can start the GMA app.

The main GMA screen shows the IP address of the device and the TCP port it is listening to (0=6400).

On the development machine, define the FGLSERVER environment variable with the IP address of the device (or .

Now you are ready to run your app on the server and display on the Android device.

TCP port forwarding for GMA on Android emulator

When using an Android emulator, you can forward the TCP port with the adb forward command:
adb forward tcp:local_port tcp:gma_device_port
For example:
adb forward tcp:6401 tcp:6400
You can then connect to GMA with:
FGLSERVER=127.0.0.1:1

Enabling Universal Rendering

Universal Rendering can be enabled by using the gui.rendering FGLPROFILE entry.