Although there is no official announcement that Google is actively working on its Fuchsia OS besides repositories available on Github, on Google Git, and the Android Open Source Project (AOSP), everyone knows by now that the new OS will most probably be able to run on anything from mobile phones to computers and IoT devices.
We also know that Fuchsia OS will not be running on a modified version of the Linux kernel, the new operating system will use a custom microkernel dubbed Zircon which is derived from Little Kernel, an OS initially developed for embedded devices.
Fuchsia OS features a futuristic user interface
Furthermore, even though at first Fuchsia OS did not come with a user interface of its own, it eventually evolved enough to allow the guys from Hotfixit.net to build it as an .APK package and to install it on an Android device (you can see how that build looked like from the image below or in a YouTube video).
.png)
What we didn't know until now was what type of apps will be able to run on it and if the current slew of Android applications will be compatible with Fuchsia OS.
This is no longer a mystery however seeing that, according to an issue published to the Fuchsia repository on the AOSP website, Android apps will be able to run on Google's Fuchsia OS via a custom version of the Android Runtime (ART).
A lot of questions regarding Fuchsia OS are still unanswered
As the readme file added to the AOSP Fuchsia repository confirms, the ART version used with Fuchsia OS will not target specific hardware, and it will produce a platform-specific package with a .far extension, a similar approach to the popular Android Package Kit (APK) package file format Android uses for app distribution and installation.
Despite clear evidence that Android apps will be compatible with Google's Fuchsia OS, there are still a lot of questions surrounding the means through which they will be able to run on the new operating system.
The questions that still need to be answered range from how will these apps be able to blend with the futuristic looking platform they will have to run on to the way the custom ART version will be able to act as an interface for the Zircon kernel.
Comments
Dominique1 - 5 years ago
It doesn't surprise me, and it makes sense for them to be able to execute Android app. After all, these apps are written in Java. They just need to rewrite an interface system layer, and there they go, 100% compatible.
serghei - 5 years ago
100% agree. Apple did something similar when moving from the PPC platform to Intel with the Rosetta dynamic binary translator.
I guess Google could also do something like that or just require Android developers to use something like their Flutter mobile app development SDK to generate native apps for all supported platforms.