Installing PhoneGap on Ubuntu Linux, and being a newbie

[ebisudave]

Hello PhoneGap developers and users,

I have been reading the PhoneGap web page for the last few days, and I
am stumped as to getting PhoneGap installed and started.

Part of what is holding me back is that I am a web developer and
designer, who can program PHP and Javascript, but I am obviously out
of my depth when it comes to emulators and development environments.

Please forgive the absolute newbie-ness of my questions.

I am developing a Javascript web site which I'm hoping to be able to
bundle into apps that can be run on Androids and iPhones (and others
if I get that far!). I'm running Ubuntu Linux, version 10.04 (Lucid).

First, I am stuck on the premise of PhoneGap - is it a stand alone
application that converts (or bundles) Javascript/HTML/CSS code into
apps, or is it a plug in for Eclipse and/or other development
environments? From the download page, when one clicks to find download
instructions, one is taken to a list of devices, and with each device
is different instructions for installing different emulators. So... I
need to install an emulator for each device I want to send my app to?

Which brings me to my second issue. I thought I might plunge ahead and
install at least one emulator and see what I ended up with. The iPhone
emulator instructions are Apple specific, though (even though there is
one line near the top about having Git installed on Linux). The
instructions for installing the Android emulator are Windows specific.

I downloaded the PhoneGap program and looked around, and discovered it
seems to be based on Ruby. The "readme" files are of some weird ".md"
extensions which I have never seen before in my life, so...

Long story short, I'm spinning around here, and I don't know where to
even begin.

Can someone give a breakdown on what I should expect from PhoneGap -
is it an emulator plug in or stand alone application?

Then, is there somewhere that explains how I can install PhoneGap on
Ubuntu, or at least on Linux? I have access to devices for testing, so
I don't really need emulators if they aren't necessary.

Thank you for any advice.

[Jesse MacFadyen]

Your app is written in JS/HTML/CSS however, when it comes to packaging or distributing your app the tools you use will depend on your device choices.

ALL the implementations work by creating a browser control and running your code in that browser with some special hooks for native functions.  The app container, and build process is different for every device.

Since you are planning on using Ubuntu I would recommend that you work in Android, as the Android keychain ( I believe ) is the most solid in Linux.

Anyone out there using Ubuntu to build iPhone Android apps wanna jump in? Joe?

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For more info on PhoneGap or to download the code go to www.phonegap.com

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[ebisudave]

Jesse,

Thank you for responding.

I understand that the "app" that is created by PhoneGap is essentially
just a browser wrapper that is dedicated to showing the HTML/CSS/
Javascript code on the device.

I also understand that each device would need a different browser
wrapper.

However, what I don't understand is the complexity in implementing
PhoneGap. I don't mean that as a criticism, I sincerely don't
understand the need for the emulators and why it should matter what
platform one creates any particular browser-wrapper on.

To make my question more clear, let me ask by proposing what I think
"should" (for lack of a better term) be how these apps are made.

Assume all my HTML/CSS/Javascript are in a directory called "my_app".
I open up a program like PhoneGap, and point it to that directory. I
then select "Save As" and select to output as iPhone, Android,
Symbian, whatever. The system then bundles the contents of that
directory into the browser-wrapper, and outputs an "app" appropriate
for the selected device.

Even if I wanted to make an iPhone app, I should be able to just
output an "app" on my Ubuntu machine as described above, and then when
it comes time to upload it to iTunes or whatever, then I might have to
put the data on an Apple computer for purposes of passing all the
legal red tape and online verification or whatever.

Again, I don't mean to be putting these forward as a critique of the
system you have. I'm hoping and assuming that it isn't that simple for
some good reason, and that you guys have made it the way it is to
address whatever problems that make it more complicated than I
describe.

I guess I'm hoping that if I can understand why it isn't that simple,
then I can start to understand what it is I am doing when installing
all these emulators, and how to go about it.

Thank you for your time and efforts.

[Andrew Lunny]

The barriers are mostly legal - most mobile sdks can't be legally
redistributed or modified (android is the exception). Apple's build
tools are famously proprietary, and spitting out an iPhone binary on
Ubuntu is not something that their lawyers, or app review process,
would like.

Practically speaking, writing a mobile app (PhoneGap or otherwise)
without testing on a simulator and/or a device is going to give you a
lot of headaches, especially as the app gets more and more complex.
Again, the tools for doing that are closely guarded by platform
owners, and porting those to other OSes is not really feasible.

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> You received this message because you are subscribed to the Google
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> To post to this group, send email to phon...@googlegroups.com
> To unsubscribe from this group, send email to
> phonegap+u...@googlegroups.com
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>
> For more info on PhoneGap or to download the code go to www.phonegap.com
>

--
Andrew Lunny
Software Developer, Nitobi
604 685 9287
blogs.nitobi.com/andrew