As you can probably guess, my knowledge of coding is very limited. Nonetheless, I do know a little Java. I have Eclipse and was wondering if I could use it to code for iOS iPhone/iPad applications. I know that I would almost certainly have to use a language other than Java, but I'm clueless as to what packages or plugins I would need to install in Eclipse to use it to code for iOS. If you guys could answer this question in extreme detail or link me to a very good sequence of video tutorials, I would be extremely grateful.
Yes you can!
If you can live with coding ActionScript, which should be easy to learn with a Java background, you can use Eclipse & AIR to code for iOS (and Android at the same time)
Some resources:
http://flex.apache.org/
http://labs.adobe.com/technologies/flashruntimes/
http://blogs.adobe.com/flashplayer/
http://flashdaily.net/
Be aware that many apps in the store have been build on this platform, and the community is pretty alive and supportive.
The short answer is, "not natively."
Apple pretty much restricts "native" iOS development to XCode which, as #Bob said in his answer, is only available for OS X. So that means no Eclipse or Java-based development. However, there are several cross-platform development frameworks and tools that work to varying degrees of quality. Here are a few, in no particular order:
PhoneGap
Appcelerator
Corona
Adobe AIR (see answer by #dogsgod)
There are others, but those are ones that I've at least heard of and might have tried a little bit. Some, like Appcelerator, have IDEs built on Eclipse, so at least the dev environment would be familiar.
IOS apps are written in Objective-C or Swift using XCode. (This also means you'll need a Mac to do so. XCode is only available for OSX.)
So unfortunately this means the answer to your question is no. You cannot use Eclipse to write an iOS app.
Choosing corona as technology to build apps, I need to ask people who worked on it,
Can I use graphics from adobe flash swf file? to what level is it supported? would it be hardware accelerated vector graphics?
Is RTL language supported? like arabic for example?
Is there a rich UI framework? like mxml one in Flash Builder or Adobe Flex?
Is there native debugger? can I debug my app at native targets?
Is there native profiler for performance?
Are graphics filters supported? are they hardware accelerated?
There is a 3rd party software kit that allows you to convert flash animations over into corona. It's called Spriteloq: http://lanica.co/products/animo/spriteloq/ (keep in mind it's no longer a Corona offical product after the Lanica buy out).
I don't think it is. Check the Corona Enterprise edition to see if it is.
There isn't much UI to it. You just write some code, and see it on the simulator. Very fast and easy.
When you build your project in corona, you can build for iOS Phone Simulator, or run it via the Android Simulator. It takes around 15-20 seconds to build and run on a native simulator. Honestly you don't need a native simulator though because Corona's is realtime and works very well.
I don't believe so, but it might be available in Corona enterprise.
With the new Graphics 2.0 engine, YES they are! Yes they are hardware accelerated.
A newb question and one I haven't been able to see much advice on, but is it possible to create a single package that will install and run on both blackberry OS5 and OS6 devices?
I want to avoid preprocessing or creation of two different COD files.
I am not using anything special that differs between the two OS's (afaik!)
Yes, absolutely. So far, RIM has made all of it's OS revisions backwards-compatible. So anything you write against any given OS version will work on that version and all newer versions.
That's not to say that you won't run into funny quirks when moving to newer OS versions, but your code will execute without recompilation. You just can't take advantage of any of the newer OS's API changes without doing preprocessing.
Basically in this case you just should not use APIs which were added in OS6.
I want to develop and port some of our windows phone 7 games to the iOS platform.
But currently it seems that our only option is: MonoTouch + XNATouch?
Do you use any other SDK for running XNA games on the iOS?
What is your opinion on developing XNATouch Games?
http://xnatouch.codeplex.com/
You might want to support ExEn, this guys is trying to get support to open source his port to iPhone, Mac and Android.
Hello Andrei :) well on XNATouch Stuff currently they are on 1.0 stable version wich only supports XNA 3.1 and only with spritebatch no 3D available at the moment, in the next releases the will be dropping 3.1 support because you can no longer release games on XBLIG that are built under 3.1 and they will be bringing XNA 4.0 support, when you may ask unfortunately there is no ETA. As this is an open source implementation brought to all of us by a great community its prone to bugs but as a great community we all are you can always submit a bug or fix the code yourself and submit a patch.
The best thing you can do its to give it a chance and try then decide yourself if it fits your needs.
Hope this helps
Alex
You can so do this now! Time has marched on and XNA development is a reality on iOS using MonoGame.
Here are some app store games written using this framework:
Console Wars
Chicken Store
Derfwood
As perhaps you know already, most probably the next version of Delphi will be cross-platform. Also, here are some polls on the matter.
While writing a cross-compiler isn't a thing which interests us very much now, porting a library which was/is Windows-tied to multiple platforms, certainly does.
You can think, for example at VCL (Delphi's standard library). While it was designed for Windows only, it has value in it, and, of course, there are huge codebases which depend on it.
The question is:
Which would be the best approach to made an application / library cross-platform aware ensuring a smooth conversion / upgrade path (as much as possible of course)?
I stress it again, we are not interested which is the best way to do cross-platform development only (there were questions on this theme). We are interested also in yet another requirement: The old code base / installations management.
PS: Experiences and/or methodologies from similar situations with other languages (eg. C/C++) which are regarded as standard practices are welcomed.
Thanks in advance.
Visual component developer's perspective:
Add levels of functionality to your code, so as to be able to add another platform without changing the "Core" of the component.
The compiler hopefully will have a platform switch. (Preferable more than one, working in conjunction with each other. ex. Windows/ARM, Windows/386, OSX/Cacao/386, Linux/Gnome/386).
The Layout structure might look something like this.
ComponentJ.pas
Linux\ComponentJ.pas
Linux\Gnome\ComponentJ.pas
Linux\KDE\ComponentJ.pas
OSX\ComponentJ.pas
386\ComponentJ.pas
ARM\ComponentJ.pas
As an Application Developer:
I'll start by moving all WIN API calls in my code into a group of libraries in a Windows directory as to be able to IFDEF it at library level and translate it into another platform I'd like to support as soon as the compiler becomes available, but only as I come across them.)
This will also add the possibility to add adapters easier for the new platforms.
It in any case is good practice to remove possible dependencies into a central place.
IMHO you can't build a xplatform Delphi and ensure a smooth transition for current VCL applications. It won't work. VCL was (luckily, because it allowed for great applications) designed with Windows in mind, and trying to design a compatible library working on a different platform would just mean longer development cycles and lots of compromises. The outcome will be a library noone would wish to use. Look at what happened to VCL.NET: it was the wrong choice. And it was working on the same OS!
We know that targeting non-Windows platform with native applications needs a native GUI library. We don't care about creating a GUI from scratch, for our application it's the way to go, we don't need Windows GUIs with all their standards under a different OS using different standards - we need to be able to code a fully native GUI for the target OS.
Other applications may survive a GUI porting, but in the long run you don't get a real xplatform tool - you get a tool that may compile for other platforms but brings one platform paradigms to others - and it will also be not welcome by "native" developers on other platforms. If you're a Linux or Mac developer, why should you learn how to work with a library that carries its Windows inheritance to your platform? You'd find it a pain in the ass. If Embarcadero wants to sell XDelphi outside actual developers base, it has to offer much more than a new CLX.
I will pull from some ancient experience in making a code base cross compilable between windows and dos (Delphi 1/Turbo Pascal 7). The rule of thumb was to separate code into multiple units. Try to code WITHOUT using windows, messages or any visual components. If you find you need to make a call to one of these, then place that call in another unit and write a proxy (abstract class that you descend from works well) to dispatch the calls through. When a cross compatible version is released, all that you should have to do is code the other side of the proxy for the new target.
If you're designing a form based system, then try to stick with as many of the standard components as possible. NEVER implement any "business" rules directly in an event, instead place them in another unit and call into the other unit to perform the logic.
Now, there will definitely be changes required to get your final project cross compatible, but by following these simple patterns you should be able to greatly reduce the amount of work it will take.
Experience so far has shown that the best way to get a Delphi app compatible with future versions is to stick to pure Delphi components, and use nothing third party. Such an app will probably suck, but that's how it seems to me. I use lots of third party components, and the apps are great and successful. But the chances of them moving to this future too are not certain, and that may cause problems with such changes, but I'd rather have a great app now and have the problem than have a poor app now and not need to worry about it.
Compromises should not be done too much to make VCL compatible with Linux and Mac. Windows is VCL's root. I'll prefer a new and very clean GUI framework, even though without any backward compatibility. Make VCL fatter and fatter isn't a good idea!
make a cross-platform Pascal compiler
make a cross-platform RTL
put the QT on top
Well, look at freepascal and lazarus
I don't get it. All .NET looks the same to me providing we don't use any third party.
Delphi using standard control is already fully functional but your app would look
like thousands of others.
I think Embar should go for PDA, IPhone, Andriod as Windows desktop already eat about
98% of the market.
Mac is expensive and Linux is no cost at all. No use to go for Mac and Linux. Not worth
the investment.
Well, aside the things said - thanks all - I do think that there we need some additional things:
we need tooling to do the necessary conversions
we need tooling to help us in programming against a (some form of) MVC pattern
Simply pick the latest 4.6 QT and add good integration betwen the Pascal and the QT library.
They have done it before (in the Kylix times). The QT is such powerfull these days.
I believe that QT is even better then VCL and at least 10 times more frequently updated and fixed.
So the plan is simple:
make a cross-platform Pascal compiler
make a cross-platform RTL
put the QT on top
and you will have a first-class natively looking applications on all platforms.
My opinion:
Make cross platform compiler (OS x/Linux/ embedded solutions?/ symbian?). Maybe add ability to compile/convert pascal code into portable c/c++ code to build then on embedded platforms.
RTL have to be separated into cross-platform layer and native layer (as for JCL).
Add new core components for cross-platform compatibility and native components for each supported platform (QT for ex)
Add translation utilities to create/convert between platform's components, for ex: to convert pure windows form into mac os x cocoa's form.
All windows hierarchy of components have to be only upgraded to support x64 with maximum backward compatibility. All cross-platform component have to be in parallel hierarchy.
Next version of cross platform solution can be refactored and can include migration/convertion utility. Due to minimum codebase of cross-platform solutions, hierarchy and classes for cross platform can be heavily changed from version to version to achieve best architecture.
sorry for my English - not a native language (Russian is)!
Make C/C++/Delphi compilers that targets OSX/Linux
Make C/C++ compiler that can be Boosted
Write new VCL-Presentation Foundation (VGScene/WPF alike)
it should not be backward compatibile! Delphi IDE should be
written with such VCL-PF
Component Library should stay as it is (but with improved Data-Binding)
Only provide VCL 64-bit for Win64
Is this a problem?