Android: build native GUI app with NDK?

Question

independent from the fact if it makes sense or not, if it is a good way to create Android apps or not: for (educational/personal/whatever) reasons I want to create an Android app with graphical user interface in C++ using the NDK.

What I found so far are some information about the NDK, how to create native libraries and how to access them out of Java applications. But what I'm really looking for are some information how to create a View and to add graphical user interface elements to that View out of my C++ NDK app.

Any ideas and hints how that can be done or where some more information/HOWTOs can be found regarding this?

Solution

Juce is a fantastic C++ UI framework that works well on Android.

It can be used under the GPL or a paid-for commercial licence. The community is fairly active and the author is very friendly and helpful. I found it relatively easy to build using the NDK tools on Windows.

Caveat - it seems Android isn't a high priority platform for them, so some things are missing at time of writing (e.g. support for hardware buttons). Still, in my experience, the UI framework does work very well on Android, and that's what your question is about.

Comments

[Ran]

Use developer.android.com/reference/android/app/NativeActivity.h‌​tml. That's the closest you'll get. but you don't have the UI elements in the NDK, you'll have to do it on your own. Requires Android 2.3+.