5 ms·

How does this compare to React Native from a build-tool persepctive? From experience Native, Cordova, Xamarin, etc, all took a while for their build-tools to ma

How does this compare to React Native from a build-tool persepctive? From experience Native, Cordova, Xamarin, etc, all took a while for their build-tools to mature (mostly by making the right trade-offs) so to allow a degree of freedom without running into some build hells (though sometimes still do). It's for this reason that I normally just go plain objc/swift/java

yesimahuman 5y ago
The answer is nuanced because a good chunk of your app is just your web app, so you use standard build/dev tools there. For the native side, Capacitor probably has the least amount of abstraction over native compared to Xamarin or RN, it’s quite a bit simpler than both of those. We have some CLI commands to run your app locally but otherwise you just use Xcode or Android Studio directly, no need for a lot of custom brittle tooling
- archibaldJ 5y ago
  I see! Thanks for the info. One of my concerns is more about extendability & language-bridging; eg my app needs to access a bluetooth module or uses opencv: would it be easy to plug in an existing Swift/Java libraries that has deps on these low-level stuff (without mingling too much with the build process like enabling or turning off some flags, hijacking some of Capacitor's own build processes, etc)
  - yesimahuman 5y ago
    Absolutely. If it’s not in a Capacitor plugin and it’s custom native code or config, you manage those things as you would any other native iOS or Android project. On iOS just add it to your Podfile or add the library in Xcode. In Android add it as a dependency. We have some automated configuration tooling coming if you really don’t want to touch the IDEs at all: https://github.com/ionic-team/capacitor-configure/ https://github.com/ionic-team/capacitor-configure/
    - archibaldJ 5y ago
      thanks! very cool to know! I'll try out Capacitor in my project!

yesimahuman 5y ago

The answer is nuanced because a good chunk of your app is just your web app, so you use standard build/dev tools there. For the native side, Capacitor probably has the least amount of abstraction over native compared to Xamarin or RN, it’s quite a bit simpler than both of those. We have some CLI commands to run your app locally but otherwise you just use Xcode or Android Studio directly, no need for a lot of custom brittle tooling

archibaldJ 5y ago
I see! Thanks for the info. One of my concerns is more about extendability & language-bridging; eg my app needs to access a bluetooth module or uses opencv: would it be easy to plug in an existing Swift/Java libraries that has deps on these low-level stuff (without mingling too much with the build process like enabling or turning off some flags, hijacking some of Capacitor's own build processes, etc)
- yesimahuman 5y ago
  Absolutely. If it’s not in a Capacitor plugin and it’s custom native code or config, you manage those things as you would any other native iOS or Android project. On iOS just add it to your Podfile or add the library in Xcode. In Android add it as a dependency. We have some automated configuration tooling coming if you really don’t want to touch the IDEs at all: https://github.com/ionic-team/capacitor-configure/ https://github.com/ionic-team/capacitor-configure/
  - archibaldJ 5y ago
    thanks! very cool to know! I'll try out Capacitor in my project!