This discussion will focus on the potential removal of the `cordova serve` command from the Cordova CLI. Since we're preparing for the next major CLI release, now is the best time to decide and, if agreed, include this change.
A vote thread will also be opened. **In my opinion, the `cordova serve` command should be removed.** In over 8 years of working with Cordova, I've never found a real-world need for this command beyond verifying that it still works during CLI releases. * **Landing page metadata**: There is no benefit of this screen since the metadata can already be obtained via `cordova info`. * **Platform pages**: I believe the purpose of these pages is used for testing the app. One thing to note is that during the startup of the page, dialogs will display. This dialog was once used as a bridge for communication with the native side, but it's no longer relevant. * **Using serve for testing?**: The only remaining use case where people might use this command is for the ability to serve the app locally so they can open and test it on an emulator or device's browser. But since browsers and WebViews don't behave the same, this isn't an adequate testing method. It's far more reliable to build the app and run it in a simulator, emulator, or on a real device. For modern development workflows, tools like **webpack dev server** (or similar) are better suited. Developers can configure the `<content>` element of their app's config.xml to point to this local dev server. **Given that:** * The alternatives are better, and * `cordova serve` doesn't provide accurate or useful results, **I believe we should deprecate and remove the `cordova serve` command.** If voted and passed, we would be able to drop the **cordova-serve** package from **cordova-lib**, reducing dependencies to maintain for CLI releases. If you have any reasons for keeping this command, please share. And keep the vote in the voting thread. I'll be preparing a separate thread as well to discuss the deprecation of **cordova-serve** itself, and potentially **cordova-browser**, which also depends on it.
