About iOS Emulators (not Simulators)

[P5music]

I searched the internet to understand what can be done with iOS simulator and I stumbled upon the concept of iOS emulators, that they exist as far as I understand, also for Windows.

Even an official tool is provided by Apple, it seems:

Uso di TestFlight per distribuire app Xamarin.iOS - Xamarin | Microsoft Docs

I have to deepen my knowledge of these things and whether it's free stuff or not, 

but I would like to know what do you think about that

in regard to testing the iOS builds produced by CodenamenOne servers.

Thanks in advance

[Dave Dyer]

If you're talking about testing, rather than debugging, I don't think emulators can

possibly substitute for actual hardware.   Ordinary debugging works pretty well

from the simulator built into eclipse (or netbeans).

OTOH if you're doing "desperation level" debugging of mysterious crashes, it works

to compile from the codename1 sources and use the emulator built into xcode

or a usb connection to a real device.

[Shai Almog]

I'm not aware of any iOS emulators but things might have changed. If you have something in English that might be interesting but only as general knowledge.

Emulators are useless for day-day development. A device is a must have expense for these things. That's true for Android too which does have an emulator.

[P5music]

@Shai Almog

Sorry the link was wrong both because it led to the italian version and it is not relevant for what I am asking.

Please consider this page (I found other ones in search results in fact) which talks about iOS emulators on Windows:

14 Best iOS Emulators for Windows (2021 List) (connectivasystems.com)  
@Dave Dyer 

I just want to test the functionality of my CodenameOne app on a reasonably reliable emulator, not performance or debugging or special features, just cross-platform.

For example I could check the mouse events capture in the CEF BrowserComponent.

I have the possibility to test on a real device but via another tester, I would like to test on other Apple models too, and, finally, doing it myself is certainly better.

Regards

[Dave Dyer]

At the level of "makes a picture and does something", any device is a pretty good indicator for all; but the

edges of the envelope where one device works perfectly and another does not are always pretty

close at hand.  Things like memory size, screen size, pixel density, and raw CPU power are wildly variable.

Adding an emulator to the mix of devices you test on won't add a lot.

[Shai Almog]

That link is a SEO spam article that just writes nonsense to get clicks for specific keywords. I'm unfamiliar with most of those things but those I'm familiar with aren't emulators. E.g. the xamarin tool isn't an emulator. They have a tool where you can have a Mac in your office and then effectively debug on it with the simulator and remote screen mirroring. There are a lot of solutions like that out there that even have hosted physical devices in the cloud you can debug/test with.

E.g. https://www.perfecto.io/

[P5music]

Maybe that page is well crafted as SEO spam, but it seems that some of those applications are true emulators.

For example appetize.io, it at least can run XCode bundles .app, and maybe it can run any iOS app.

Now I want to further read that article but it would be interesting to hear from you about the emulators from a technical perspective, for examples if the iOS builds from CodenameOne server can run on any of those emulators, or if a bundle could be created also as the build process output to take advantage of similar products.

Regards

[Shai Almog]

I don't know if appetize uses an emulator or is like https://www.perfecto.io/ it doesn't really matter both are semantically the same. We produce an ipa that would work with perfector etc. and should work with anything that runs iOS.

[P5music]

I read somewhere that in certain cases, the ipa file is a zip file that contains

also an .app file, so that it can be extracted and tested on a simulator.

Is it the case for CodenameOne builds too?

If not, could it be in the immediate future?
Regards

[Shai Almog]

The ipa is a zip of an app

[P5music]

Ok the ipa is a zip of an app.

Now let's deal with what I asked:

Is it possible that inside it there is an .app file,

that is

that kind of file that is runnable inside the iOS simulators

like XCode iOS simulator (Mac OS) or Microsoft iOS Simulator (Windows)?

It is not important that the .app file is inside the ipa.

I think that a different command on your Mac server can produce it and make the downloading possible from the dashboard. 

the same that is now for the ipa file.

I know that your paid accounts are different from free ones

but

in this case it's not like having the XCode project

instead 

it is just having
a file that can be loaded into an iOS simulator.

Instead of running on a physical device or an emulator.

Regards

[Dave Dyer]

IOS apps are integrated bundles of executable and other resources. 

The naked executable will fail when it looks for the first external resource

and doesn't find it.

[Shai Almog]

iOS simulator is a completely different target and an x86 platform. I don't understand what you're trying to do.

[P5music]

Yes it is not the original question but

I am saying to create a new CN menu entry "Send build to iOS simulator".

It's matter of having a new command-line compilation script and let the user download the product that is compatible with the iOS simulators.

Regards

[Shai Almog]

How would you run the iOS simulator without a Mac?

What's the purpose of doing this?

You have include source which lets you run in the iOS simulator and debug there: https://www.codenameone.com/how-do-i---use-the-include-sources-feature-to-debug-the-native-code-on-iosandroid-etc.html

[P5music]

As you can read in the above comments, I clearly said that a Microsoft iOS simulator is available

where I think it is possible to load and run the .app file as it is on the Mac and the iOS simulator.

Regards

[P5music]

Update:

please also read my previous post and the new thread

About the "Send build to iOS Simulator" choice (google.com)

[Shai Almog]

Do you mean the Xamarin one?

That's not an emulator/simulator. Anyway, we don't have plans for that flow and don't have the resources to pick it up.

[Dave Dyer]

I think you overestimate the utility of the free tier; and your partition of capabilities into the

basic and premium tiers is barely tolerable.  I'd love to make more use of codename1 and

less use of your build servers if you made that possible: but you have boxed desktop, javascript,

and offline builds into premium pricing tiers.

[Shai Almog]

You can use the source code to build and always could. Apps like our Uber clone etc. fit well under the 1mb base limit before the increase we did a couple of years ago.

Also the new Maven build will make building offline easier in the free tier. It will also include a partial desktop target (jar executable) not the full installer we have in the server based build which is more challenging but pretty much enough for that.

[Dave Dyer]

It's true you "can" build, but there's no decent interface to do so, and there's no script to go from

producing the sources to a finished apk.  Your build servers are very convenient, but you don't

make that functionality available standalone.

[Shai Almog]

Did you read what I said?
Going from the generated sources to the finished version isn't too hard. You just open them in xcode or in Android Studio and press Play.

[Dave Dyer]

I haven't tried the exercise for android, but for IOS I had to study your source code and cobble together

a very obscure invocation of the code generator.  If it were friendly, there would be a "generate source code for Android"

option, right beside the "send build" option.

Of course, I'm disappointed that codename1 isn't arranged specifically for my benefit, but I understand

your need to have a viable business.

[Shai Almog]

I specifically wrote that we made it simpler in the upcoming maven build. You would be able to convert your ant project to maven and it would be easier to use Codename One without the build servers in that case.

[Dave Dyer]

Thanks, I’ll be watching.  Are there any changes in the availability of desktop and JavaScript builds?

[Shai Almog]

You would be able to build a desktop jar. Not the full Mac/Windows installer build.

As a separate thing we plan to let everyone build a preview version of the JavaScript build. This wouldn't be licensed for redistribution and would have a watermark but you'd be able to see the results.

[Dave Dyer]

Cool.  I imagine my app will be extremely stressful to the js port.