Author | Luo Yanshan
This article is a special curated article of "2021 InfoQ Annual Technical Inventory and Outlook", produced by InfoQ Newsroom, focusing on the important developments and progress of HarmonyOS in 2021.
"Hongmeng, it's done!!" On October 23, 2021, Yu Chengdong, Managing Director of Huawei, CEO of Consumer Business, and CEO of Smart Car Solutions BU, announced on his personal Weibo. 2021 is the third year since harmonyOS was released in 2019, and the buzz in HarmonyOS has been no better than in the previous two years, but this is not bad news. Compared with getting up and dealing with the whirlpool of technology games between countries, the moment of "Taoguang Yang Obscurity" is more meaningful to HarmonyOS.
This article takes you through the key developments and technological developments of HarmonyOS in 2021 and looks ahead to its 2022 developments. Thanks to a number of professionals who have provided very valuable perspectives during the writing process of this article, special thanks (in no particular order): Youku senior wireless development expert Liu Yang, Cocos Engine Technology Director Ling Huabin, Sina Weibo client technology head Gao Yihang.
Dynamic review
Yu Chengdong's "Hongmeng has become" actually means that "the Hongmeng ecology has begun to take shape". The latest official data shows that Huawei already has 220 million + devices equipped with HarmonyOS, and 100 million + devices from ecological partners equipped with HarmonyOS. In December 2020, Huawei released the HarmonyOS 2.0 mobile phone developer beta version, and then in June 2021, half a year later, with the smooth release of HarmonyOS 2.0, by December, the adaptation push of the official version of Hongmeng for all planned models has been basically completed, including many old mobile phones and tablet products of Huawei and Honor.
Atomic service capabilities are the characteristics of Hongmeng system, and its installation-free, ready-to-use features are more user-friendly and can increase user activity for App developers. Therefore, this year, the atomization service of the HarmonyOS system can be said to be "barbaric growth", click on the service center to see the "various" atomized cards, covering all walks of life, such as Air China launched the "Air China", click on the card to book tickets, view the itinerary, check in and other operations; GF Securities launched the "market service", "account opening service", "second answer service" and so on... It is not only Internet companies that "eat crabs" in the ecology.
At the same time, the HarmonyOS community is becoming more and more lively. There are more and more HarmonyOS development books on the market, as well as related developer websites and public accounts, and many developers have also started HarmonyOS open source projects on open source websites. The official website of HarmonyOS has also recently launched the HarmonyOS Developer Resource Center - DevEco Marketplace, which summarizes various resources such as native libraries, third-party libraries, and sample code related to HarmonyOS development.
Looking back at 2021, HarmonyOS has the following key developments:
On May 18, 2021, Huawei announced that it will upgrade the "Work With HUAWEI HiLink" brand and the "Powered by HarmonyOS" brand to the "HarmonyOS Connect" brand, that is, Hongmeng Zhilian, and the former HiLink developer platform and HarmonyOS certification platform will be upgraded to the Hongmeng Zhilian ecosystem service platform. On August 18 of the same year, the hongmeng zhilian device certification was officially launched.
On June 2, 2021, Huawei officially released HarmonyOS 2.0 and several new products equipped with HarmonyOS 2.
On October 22, 2021, Huawei released the HarmonyOS 3 Developer Preview. It is expected that in the first quarter of 2022, Huawei will release the HarmonyOS 3 developer beta version.
On December 23, 2021, Huawei released the Hongmeng Auto AITO Q&I M5, equipped with a HarmonyOS cockpit.
Technological evolution and development direction
The Harmony OS 3.0.0 Developer Preview released in October has greatly improved performance and developer experience compared to the Harmony OS 2.0 release in 2020.
Harmony OS 3.0.0 Developer Preview continues to evolve around "elastic deployment, HyperTerminal, and one-time development multi-terminal deployment". With the release of this release, the HarmonyOS Application and Services Development Tool Suite Family Bucket has also been fully upgraded to include the new generation of declarative UI framework ArkUI 3.0, the multi-language cross-platform compiler ArkCompiler 3.0, the cross-end development tool DevEco Studio 3.0, and the TS/JS-based API 7.
Ark Development Framework 3.0
"One-time development multi-terminal deployment" is the main highlight of Harmony OS, which can be deployed to different devices on demand through a set of engineering code and one development shelf. In order to achieve this goal, Huawei mainly starts from three aspects: Harmony system capabilities, ArkUI 3.0 framework capabilities, and development tool capabilities.
ArkUI 3.0 (Ark Development Framework 3.0) introduces a new declarative development paradigm based on typeScript (TS) extensions. The "Declarative Development Paradigm Based on TS Extensions" is one of the two development paradigms offered by the Ark Development Framework, which uses programming that is closer to natural semantics, allowing developers to visually describe the UI interface without having to care about how the framework implements UI drawing and rendering, enabling simple and efficient development.
Currently, HarmonyOS offers two UI frameworks and three development paradigms.
The new ArkUI 3.0 framework, in addition to introducing a new generation of declarative UI development paradigm, also designs a unified front-end and back-end flat rendering mechanism to further improve the performance of UI rendering and reduce memory consumption, and deeply combine ArkCompiler 3.0's Ark compiler and Ark runtime to improve the execution performance and cross-language communication capabilities of the language. On the tools side, a new compilation toolchain and preview engine has been built for the new generation of declarative UI development paradigms, providing a real-time preview mechanism that is what you see is what you get.
In addition, in the ArkUI 3.0 framework, the Web-like paradigm continues to be preserved, that is, both the Web-like paradigm and the new generation of declarative UI paradigms can be supported and can be used independently of each other, but not mixed.
UI programming frameworks play a vital role in app development. ArkUI 3.0, with its new development paradigm, has taken a solid first step and has begun to support more critical applications. Next, in addition to the continuous improvement of infrastructure, HarmonyOS will focus on supporting ecological expansion, mainly including the improvement of advanced UI capabilities, such as tripartite maps, game integration, and web capability enhancements.
Ark Compiler 3.0
HarmonyOS 3.0.0 provides ArkCompiler 3.0 (ARK Compiler 3.0) for compiling and building applications. ArkCompiler is a unified programming platform designed to support the joint compilation and operation of multiple programming languages and multiple chip platforms, and its goal is to provide a language-pluggable, component-configurable multilingual compiler runtime.
Language pluggable: Designed to support multi-language access, ArkCompiler has the ability to provide a multi-language runtime with efficient execution performance and cross-language advantages, as well as an efficient and lightweight single-language runtime on a small device.
Component configurable: ArkCompiler has a rich compiler runtime component system. Compile runtime languages and components with custom configurations to support different performance and memory needs on a variety of devices, including mobile phones, PCs, tablets, TVs, cars, and smart wearables.
Currently, the main supported languages for ArkCompiler 3.0 are JavaScript, TypeScript, and Java. In the future, while continuously optimizing the basic experience, ArkCompiler will further combine the needs of HarmonyOS Interconnection of Everything, provide the underlying solutions and optimization mechanisms from the compiler and runtime in innovative scenarios such as cross-end migration and multi-terminal collaboration, and improve the development and operation experience of distributed applications.
DevEco Studio 3.0
HUAWEI DevEco Studio is a one-stop integrated development environment (IDE) for developing HarmonyOS applications and atomization services. On the last day of 2021, the DevEco Studio 3.0 Beta2 version was officially released.
By the time the HarmonyOS 3.0.0 Developer Preview was released, the Developer IDE Tools were already available for upgrade to version 3.0 Beta1. Key features include support for the ArkUI 3.0 framework, low-code development enhancements (new support for Tablet device development, atomic layout capabilities that can be automatically adapted to interface design effects for different sizes, and multi-device development switching capabilities), and a new Scoring Tool evaluation tool (developers can connect local devices or remote real machines through DevEco Studio, and independently traverse HarmonyOS applications or atomized services. Quickly perform self-testing) and more.
The 3.0 Beta1 version already supports the use of the Ark compiler to compile applications developed by the eTS language, and this upgrade adds corresponding engineering debugging functions to further support the development of eTS projects using the Ark compiler.
Current problems
After all, it is a latecomer in the operating system industry, and the development experience of HarmonyOS in the early stage of development is not perfect enough, such as the problem of bugs caused by the rapid iteration of the development environment, other problems such as the IDE experience is not good enough, some of the documentation is not written in detail, the demo provided is not perfect enough, and so on.
At the same time, some people wonder that HarmonyOS also exists JS framework and Java framework, and it seems that there is no clear conclusion as to which development framework Huawei will promote in the future.
In the long run, HarmonyOS is currently compatible with Android applications, so will it continue to be supported in the future? And how necessary is it for developers to develop Pure Hongmeng App? For many apps, it is not realistic to develop pure Hongmeng Apps, after all, a large number of mobile middleware has not yet been adapted to Hongmeng.
In addition, due to well-known problems, Huawei is currently encountering great difficulties in launching new machines, with the gradual retirement of old machines in the future, can the ownership of HarmonyOS be maintained at a high level? Will other mobile phone manufacturers adopt HarmonyOS in the future? Huawei is the developer and maintainer of HarmonyOS, as well as an important player in the mobile phone market, can Huawei maintain the neutrality of the platform and treat other possible HarmonyOS adopters equally?
These are common and tricky problems that HarmonyOS encounters in the development of the current development. Technical problems can be solved after all, and the long-term development of the problem may have to rely on open source (OpenHarmony) to crack.
Write at the end
Looking forward to 2022, we look forward to the further improvement and enrichment of the HarmonyOS ecosystem, more non-Huawei terminal devices to start using HarmonyOS, as well as linkage with HarmonyOS, and also look forward to more Pure Hongmeng Apps to the market, which requires Huawei to continue to provide more services and open more capabilities. In addition, the development of the Ark development framework and the Ark compiler is also worth paying attention to. Officially, the TS/JS language will become increasingly important in HarmonyOS application development.
Finally, I would like to mention a dynamic of HarmonyOS in 2021, that is, the "interoperability" with Euler's open source operating system.
At the Huawei Full Connectivity Conference held in September 2021, Huawei announced that Euler and Hongmeng have realized kernel technology sharing, and in the future, they plan to transplant Hongmeng's distributed soft bus capabilities to Euler, so that devices equipped with Euler's operating system can automatically identify and connect Hongmeng terminals. This is followed by further sharing in terms of secure OS, device driver frameworks, and new programming languages. At that time, it was also mentioned that in 2022, Huawei will release an application programming language called "Cangjie", and Hongmeng and Euler will develop based on the same programming language, so that they can better complete the migration of applications and achieve the goal of ecological interoperability.
In fact, whether it is HarmonyOS, Ark compiler or the future Cangjie language, it reflects Huawei's determination to do a full range of layout in basic software, and we can also look forward to more breakthroughs in Huawei's root technology in 2022.
References:
HarmonyOS developer WeChat public account
Technical Forum Huawei Hongmeng Application Development Official Website (https://developer.harmonyos.com/)