Hi, Max and Kenneth Thanks for the comment. Answer your two questions in one mail:
There is a not-insignificant group of app developers who *prefer* to work from the command line, but (iirc) to do so required installing the IDE which was a large download and install, and mostly useless for the cli developer. Furthermore, it was a significant effort to develop the tools such that we could avoid using java (etc), and instead used node.js and grunt. NB, thanks go to Elliot Smith for that effort. Avoid using java doesn't make sense. In my opinion, the tool from Elliot smith tries to use nodejs/grunt to replace python, not java/javac related tools. That's because all web apps are needed to be built as native applications so JDK/Android SDK are always needed. Let's start by providing excellent CLI tools and then we can build on top of that. It is not like Eclipse is the preferred tool for web developers and we want to allow integration with as many IDE/editors as possible, not just Eclipse (which even Android is moving away from - hence Android Studio). We have two kinds of tools: python and nodejs. We're keeping improving and I don't see a big gap there especially for python based. We could do them at the same time. If you think there are lots of gaps for packaging tool, please let me know. For IDE, we should integrate with upstream. Right now Android studio is not mature enough, but we need to investigate it and eclipse based solution. Yongsheng From: Crosswalk-dev [mailto:crosswalk-dev-boun...@lists.crosswalk-project.org] On Behalf Of Max Waterman Sent: Wednesday, December 25, 2013 9:32 PM To: crosswalk-dev@lists.crosswalk-project.org Subject: Re: [Crosswalk-dev] Intent to Implement - Build WebApps with Eclipse for Crosswalk on Android My only thought on this - as an html5 app developer - is to try and avoid the situation we found ourselves in with the Tizen IDE (also based on Eclipse). There is a not-insignificant group of app developers who *prefer* to work from the command line, but (iirc) to do so required installing the IDE which was a large download and install, and mostly useless for the cli developer. Furthermore, it was a significant effort to develop the tools such that we could avoid using java (etc), and instead used node.js and grunt. NB, thanks go to Elliot Smith for that effort. I hope that the Crosswalk IDE can build *on top of* command line tools so that there is no fragmentation between the cli tools and the implementation available in Eclipse. Unfortunately, the tools are already in python which (imo) is not a good choice for integration with web developers' environments, but at least they are command line tools. IINM, the Android SDK/IDE is built up in this same way - ie the IDE uses command line tools in the SDK to do the work, so that the IDE can be avoided completely, if the developer so desires. I suggest we do likewise. Thanks for your consideration on this matter. Max. On 25/12/13 14:10, Wu, Donna wrote: Description: Currently, web developers can only use command-line tools to package their Crosswalk WebApps, e.g. make_apk.py for Android. Our goal is to enable building crosswalk WebApps in Eclipse. With this feature, developers create an Crosswalk project and edit the Web stuff in Eclipse then be exported as a required package, for example "*.apk" for Android. This feature can be extended to all platforms in the feature, but we want to enable it for Android for the first step. Affected component: It will be a sub-project under crosswalk-project, so no component in current Crosswalk repo will be affected. Related feature: (Jira ID) https://crosswalk-project.org/jira/browse/XWALK-636 Target Release: (Crosswalk N) Crosswalk 5 Implementation details: The general idea is that, we provide an Eclipse plugin to add a new project type. Developer need to download the plugin and then can create the new type of project(crosswalk project), the project can be edited and then packaged to signed APK. As we need to use libs and tools from Android SDK, so our Eclipse plugin need Android SDK as its precondition. So ADT bundle version or Eclipse and ADT plugin version will be required by the plugin. 1. stand-alone project type -- (required) Just a expose the web stuff to the developer, use Crosswalk manifest.json for project configuration. The directory tree of the new project just like XPK package. Developer will not see generated Activity, cannot edit Java code, they can only edit the web stuff in Eclipse. Web stuff will be wrapped with Java code when packaging and exporting the project. 2. embedded or shared mode supporting -- (required) developers can select which mode they want to package the project in an exporting dialog. For embedded mode, developer need to specify needed resources and libs from local disk or maybe an on-line version. 3. supporting Crosswalk permissions -- (required) Crossealk manifest.json will be used to configure the project, Crosswalk permissions will be used to authorize special access ability to WebApp, and these used permissions will be recorded in manifest.json and will be mapped to Android permission after wrapping and packaging the project. Currently the map haven't be determined yet, but we will catch up the newest map. 4. different arch supporting -- (x86 required, arm Low priority) this just make sense to embedded mode. All possible options will be listed for selection in the exporting dialog. Error will be through if the required crosswalk library cannot be found in the specified resource and libs directory described in item 2. 5. various application source supporting option1: new project created from Eclipse -- (required) option2: import from a local directory with manifest.json -- (required) option3: import from XPK package -- (low priority) 6. external crosswalk extension supporting -- (Low priority) developers need to specify external crosswalk extensions when creating the project. First step, we will just support compiled extension(directory with *.js, *.jar, *.json), in the future raw Java files may be supported. _______________________________________________ Crosswalk-dev mailing list Crosswalk-dev@lists.crosswalk-project.org<mailto:Crosswalk-dev@lists.crosswalk-project.org> https://lists.crosswalk-project.org/mailman/listinfo/crosswalk-dev
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