Generic OS abstraction layer (on top of IOS/Android etc.) for mobile Apps?

Question

Similar to HAL for enabling s/w apps development on variety of h/w platforms, can a generic OS abstraction Layer ( OAL) be developed such that the apps written on top be immediately supported on all underlying platform?

IOAL can expore two interfaces. The southbound will expose open APIs towards the underlying OS ( Android/IOS/WIndows/Blackberry) which can then invoke the native APIs on OS. More than APIs the other mechanism of dealing with underlying OS will be embedded in this interface.

The northbound interface will be the standard APIs towards the APPs. This will be uniform across platforms. The OAL will also manage abstracted resources inside as it may be required to manage the underlying OS.

There will be no h/w intelligence/awareness inside this layer. This may puncture the individual power of popular platforms which draw strength from number of apps on it.

Comments

Yes Android have hardware abstraction layer, check following link.
https://source.android.com/devices/reference/files.html

Also tell what is exactly you are looking for??? Question is very fuzzy??

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Now its clear try phonegap at
http://phonegap.com/

Answer 1

Sure, a number of such frameworks exist:

 - Rhodes,
 - PhoneGap,
 - etc...

Which basically aim to let you do the app development in HTML / etc... They support what I think you are describing: a uniform API so that any app you write can use system resources and share common code for UI. The system specific pieces can usually be written as plugins (e.g., to do something specific to Android or iOS).

On the other side of things there's boot2gecko (perhaps the name has changed), which attempts to sit as a sort of platform running on top of the OS, providing all of these facilities.