eiritana/glowing-bear-cordova

Native app for glowing-bear, the HTML5 irc client of the 21st century

glowing-bear-cordova

Native app for glowing-bear, the HTML5 irc client of the 21st century.

Supports Android, Firefox OS, and iOS (self-deploy only).

You can install the developer preview from the Google Play Store here.

Getting started

After cloning this repository, you will need to get the glowing-bear submodule:

git submodule init && git submodule update

Secondly, check out the wonderful nvm if you don't know it already, it's highly recommended.

Then, install cordova:

npm install -g cordova

Next, you need to have cordova generate all the necessary build files that aren't checked into git:

cordova platform update android
cordova platform update firefoxos

Don't worry about the errors it will spew at you (if you insist on having them disappear, just run the command again. It won't change anything, but this time around, no errors should be found).

Lastly you need to tell cordova about the plugins we use, and then you'll be ready to build!

cordova plugin add cordova-plugin-inappbrowser
cordova plugin add cordova-plugin-splashscreen
cordova plugin add de.appplant.cordova.plugin.local-notification
cordova plugin add cordova-plugin-statusbar

Building for Android

Type cordova build android to build. Your apk file will end up in the /platforms/android/build/outputs/apk/ folder.

Some other commands you might want to have a look at are cordova emulate to build and install in an Android emulator instance, or cordova run to build and install onto a device (or an emulator). You can also have a look at http://www.ng-newsletter.com/posts/angular-on-mobile.html#native for some more information.

Building for FirefoxOS

As FirefoxOS apps are pure web apps, a simple cordova prepare firefoxos suffices to copy all the necessary files to the correct places. You can then point your Firefox to about:app-manager and add platforms/firefoxos/www as a packaged app. Done! If you want to learn more, https://hacks.mozilla.org/2014/02/building-cordova-apps-for-firefox-os/ is a great starting point.

Building for iOS

Due to licensing issues, Glowing Bear can't be published on Apple's App store. Fortunately, you can self-deploy apps to your phone for free (!) as of iOS 9 / Xcode 7.

First, add the platform:

cordova platform add ios

Then, install all the plugins listed above.

Next, open the built Glowing Bear.xcodeproj in Xcode. You'll need to change the Bundle Identifier to something unique to get the code signing to work. Otherwise, the default Bundle Identifier will only work in the emulator. Then, follow the steps at http://bouk.co/blog/sideload-iphone/ to deploy it to your physical device.

Note: As the Cordova build includes a copy of the GB source, it won't auto update. You'll need to update, recompile, and redeploy to get any new features of Glowing Bear.

Generating Splash Screen / Icons

Two high-res "template" pngs have been included in icons\ -- icon.png and splash.png. From these, a variety of icons and splash screens can be generated for the various platforms, without having to manually create each one. Install splashicon-generator from npm and ensure you have ImageMagick installed.

npm install splashicon-generator -g

Then run it from the root project directory, pointing it to the icons\ directory:

splashicon-generator --imagespath=icons/

See the documentation for splashicon-generator at https://github.com/eberlitz/splashicon-generator , including how to set up config.xml for various platforms.

Debugging

If you want to attach the browser's debugger, you need to tell Cordova to enable debugging. Do so with cordova plugin add com.jamiestarke.webviewdebug