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I'd love to read a writeup by someone with experience using Apportable[1] to develop an Android app. How closely does it mirror the behavior & performance of UI

I'd love to read a writeup by someone with experience using Apportable[1] to develop an Android app. How closely does it mirror the behavior & performance of UIKit, does the iOS programming model translate well to Android, etc. [1]: http://www.apportable.com http://www.apportable.com

terhechte 13y ago
I'm currently porting a game with very little UIKit (i.e. cocos2d v3 plus a couple of native UIKit elements for user interaction beyond the game), and as I understood it apportable is mostly for porting games. If you want to do UIKit, you need to contact them to get access to the proper SDK: "XCode interface builder files can be decoded by Apportable. We have several flavors of UIKit available, so if you are building your app in UIKit, contact us to get an appropriate version of the SDK." http://docs.apportable.com/supported-files.html#interface-builder-files http://docs.apportable.com/supported-files.html#interface-bu... However, I did never really look into it. If they were to fully support UIKit, it would indeed be a great way of also supporting Android for certain types of apps.
funkaster 13y ago
It doesn't. For me, it works only if you have an OpenGL game and use a few of the native API. If you're building a UIKit app, it doesn't work at all: broken support for almost everything. To be fair, I think they are rewriting the UI layer, but after working almost two years in several cross-platform projects, I decided that for anything that's not a game (no custom UI), it makes no sense if you want your app to look "good" in all platforms. Just rewrite it (at least the UI layer).
- chrisdevereux 13y ago
  Did the Foundation-level stuff work ok for you? Did you try to use many third-party libraries? Being able to keep all the logic and networking stuff intact would be a big win when porting iOS -> Android even if the UI needs rewriting.
  - zbowling 13y ago
    It's one of the things we are working on by making the UIKit layer is optional. There is a library called BridgeKit that makes dealing with Java <->Objc easy without JNI so making code go back and forth is trivial. We are also building a version of the platform that even trims off Obj-C as a better NDK for C++ developers that want to target Android from Xcode.
  - funkaster 13y ago
    Yes, the foundation part is fairly complete. Like I said: if your game/logic is written in Obj-C and it's in OpenGL, it should be ok. If you have a lot of UIKit-intense parts (semi-complex xibs, anything related to Autolayout or Storyboards), then you might need to rewrite them. NOTE: my comments are based on what I experienced with a UIKit only app a few months ago.
deleted 13y ago
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breckinloggins 13y ago
(Disclaimer: I work at Apportable) The great thing about the Apportable SDK versus other "write once run on both platforms" offerings is that you can more easily escape the "common denominator" garden. BridgeKit (our Obj-C <--> Java interop layer) lets you do almost anything you need on the Java side and call it from native code with a minimum of fuss. The fact that most of your app will be truly native code running at full-speed on the hardware doesn't hurt, either. It's true that our UIKit support is a work in progress, but it's one of our highest priorities right now. Will Apportable absolutely be a fit for you? That's hard to say. But I've seen some truly amazing things done with our product and I encourage you to give it a try.
Zigurd 13y ago
Portability frameworks are OK for games, but not for non-trivial non-game apps. If you need an expedient implementation, in most cases I would go for a Web wrapper rather than a portability framework. <-- Advice does not apply to games.

terhechte 13y ago

I'm currently porting a game with very little UIKit (i.e. cocos2d v3 plus a couple of native UIKit elements for user interaction beyond the game), and as I understood it apportable is mostly for porting games. If you want to do UIKit, you need to contact them to get access to the proper SDK: "XCode interface builder files can be decoded by Apportable. We have several flavors of UIKit available, so if you are building your app in UIKit, contact us to get an appropriate version of the SDK." http://docs.apportable.com/supported-files.html#interface-builder-files http://docs.apportable.com/supported-files.html#interface-bu... However, I did never really look into it. If they were to fully support UIKit, it would indeed be a great way of also supporting Android for certain types of apps.

funkaster 13y ago

It doesn't. For me, it works only if you have an OpenGL game and use a few of the native API. If you're building a UIKit app, it doesn't work at all: broken support for almost everything. To be fair, I think they are rewriting the UI layer, but after working almost two years in several cross-platform projects, I decided that for anything that's not a game (no custom UI), it makes no sense if you want your app to look "good" in all platforms. Just rewrite it (at least the UI layer).

chrisdevereux 13y ago
Did the Foundation-level stuff work ok for you? Did you try to use many third-party libraries? Being able to keep all the logic and networking stuff intact would be a big win when porting iOS -> Android even if the UI needs rewriting.
- zbowling 13y ago
  It's one of the things we are working on by making the UIKit layer is optional. There is a library called BridgeKit that makes dealing with Java <->Objc easy without JNI so making code go back and forth is trivial. We are also building a version of the platform that even trims off Obj-C as a better NDK for C++ developers that want to target Android from Xcode.
- funkaster 13y ago
  Yes, the foundation part is fairly complete. Like I said: if your game/logic is written in Obj-C and it's in OpenGL, it should be ok. If you have a lot of UIKit-intense parts (semi-complex xibs, anything related to Autolayout or Storyboards), then you might need to rewrite them. NOTE: my comments are based on what I experienced with a UIKit only app a few months ago.

deleted 13y ago

[deleted]

breckinloggins 13y ago

(Disclaimer: I work at Apportable) The great thing about the Apportable SDK versus other "write once run on both platforms" offerings is that you can more easily escape the "common denominator" garden. BridgeKit (our Obj-C <--> Java interop layer) lets you do almost anything you need on the Java side and call it from native code with a minimum of fuss. The fact that most of your app will be truly native code running at full-speed on the hardware doesn't hurt, either. It's true that our UIKit support is a work in progress, but it's one of our highest priorities right now. Will Apportable absolutely be a fit for you? That's hard to say. But I've seen some truly amazing things done with our product and I encourage you to give it a try.

Zigurd 13y ago

Portability frameworks are OK for games, but not for non-trivial non-game apps. If you need an expedient implementation, in most cases I would go for a Web wrapper rather than a portability framework. <-- Advice does not apply to games.