18 settembre 2013
The RenderScript Support Library lets you take advantage of the latest RenderScript features on devices running Android 2.2 and later.
One of the requests we hear most commonly from developers is to enable more devices to run the latest features of RenderScript. Over the past several releases of Android, we’ve added a ton of functionality to the RenderScript runtime, but the runtime's dependence on the core Android platform version has limited the range of devices that can support that new functionality. We’ve been working on a solution to this since last year, and we’re now ready to share it with all Android developers.
Today we're announcing a new RenderScript Support Library and updated SDK tools that together let you take advantage of RenderScript on plaform versions all the way back to Android 2.2 (Froyo).
With ADT v22.2, SDK Tools v22.2, and Android Build Tools v18.1.0, apps targeting Android 2.2 and later can now make use of almost all of the functionality available natively in RenderScript with Android 4.3. This includes access to the newest RenderScript features such as high-performance intrinsics and the new performance optimizations available to scripts.
Using the RenderScript Support Library is straightforward. Once you've updated ADT and your SDK tools, there are only two things that you have to do to start using Renderscript in your apps:
android.support.v8.renderscript
. If you are already using native RenderScript, you can change your import from android.renderscript
to android.support.v8.renderscript
.
import android.support.v8.renderscript.*;
renderscript.target=18 renderscript.support.mode=true sdk.buildtools=18.1.0
That’s it! With the RenderScript Support Library, you can continue to use the same APIs from your app as with the native RenderScript package (with a few minor exceptions that we’ll talk about below), and you can use the same features in your own scripts as you would with the latest RenderScript toolchain.
For complete details on how to set up the RenderScript Support Library, see Accessing RenderScript Java APIs.
If you'd like to use RenderScript Support Library in your app, there are few things you should know:
Allocation.USAGE_IO_INPUT
and Allocation.USAGE_IO_OUTPUT
are not currently available in the RenderScript Support Library.We’re really pleased with how the RenderScript Support Library has turned out. We've already seen how it performs in a shipping app — it's been part of the photo editor in the Google+ Android app since May 2013, and it’s definitely proven itself in a large and widely used application. We hope you’ll be happy with it too.