This is a call to all PGB users, supporters and admirers worldwide to reply to this thread and petition your up vote to ask Adobe to keep the Phonegap project alive and not send our beloved ‘Build Bot’ to its untimely demise.
Phonegap is still used by so many worldwide and has been THE starting point for so many - from the hobbyist who wanted to dabble in the world of app design & development to the student taking active steps to learn and grow - Phonegap is still used by so many to bring their entrepreneurial ideas to life thanks to you Adobe!
Adobe is not saying what the future is. The FAQ and blog have no mention. However, recently, the phonegap app has been removed from the purchase page of the creative cloud bundle. Those with existing phonegap accounts are still working. I did not try to create a new account. And phonegap may actually be in the bundle, just not listed. The bundle is currently on sale for $29 / month, normal $52. My bundle is many years old, and only recently did I discover I needed phonegap and even better, that I already had it in the bundle we purchased.
Phonegap is on life support. Here’s the sequence of events:
Adobe stopped building phonegap which was a “branch” of Cordova and converted Phonegap Build to Cordova (early 2019)
Adobe took down the signup page so no new PGB accounts could be created (early 2019)
The entire phonegap team was disbanded. As I understand it, two people were left to deal with emergencies and one of those left.
Google made some changes which required a an update to PGB and Adobe waited to the last minute
Apple made some changes and the current build version on PGB does not support those changes and despite the outcry, adobe has done nothing
Adobe recently removed Phonegap from Creative Cloud (early 2020).
In April 2020 you will no longer be able to place NEW apps in the app store which are built on the current version used on PGB
In November 2020 existing apps will not be allow to post upgrades without first being built on the newer version of Cordova.
Your adhoc certificates and provisioning profiles will still work with the PGB built code because those apps are onto the phone directly so you can still develop and test but your final build will need to be on a newer system.
Builds from AppStudio use PhoneGap Build version cli-9.0.0. That is made up of version 5.0.1 of iOS and 8.0.0 of Windows from Cordova. Cordova iOS has since been updated to 5.1.1. What Adobe needs to do is get PGB to use the updated version - the problem should be solved.
The question is whether Adobe will do this. They are not saying.
If PhoneGap does not get updated, we’ll all have to use PhoneGap CLI, or hope someone comes up with PhoneGap replacement.
We are watching this closely and will do whatever we can to help.
You can follow what the PhoneGap community is saying here: (login required)
George, if we don’t have any legacy builds with PhoneGap, can we build new AppStudio projects exclusively with Cordova and target both iOS and Android successfully?
They’re on a windows machine and want to build for iOS and since you can’t build for iOS without a Mac they use a cloud build service that uses a Mac server.
They don’t want the headache of maintaining the Cordova tool chain as it’s very fragile.
Having said that, any user can download and configure Cordova and the Android SDK and build & debug Android apps on their own PC. AppStudio makes the local building easier (unless you like mucking around in the command line and using a bunch of clumsy commands).
I know a couple of developers who build locally on windows for Android and then use a cheap used Mac to build the iOS apps and to submit them to the App Store.
I use PGB for both reasons 1 & 2 and I use MacInCloud for submitting my apps to the App Store. You can also build on MacInCloud but its rather expensive as they charge by the hour.
