Cordova plugin/project API proposal v.2

Platform_ProjectApi proposal v2.md

Cordova project workflow

• Create new project

  Why need to create a project, not an simple dir structure?

  • Basically project is a www dir, filled up with app code, plus config.xml, which can be retrieved from runtime. Currently config.xml is also stores a non-runtime configuratio,. which relates to build, package and code signing process. Maybe we can split it into two separate files?

• Add a platform

  Why separate action for add. Maybe just to fetch platform from NPM?

  • To perform all actions for platform it is only necessary to know about www directory and config.xml file (which also can be presented as ConfigParser instance isntead of physical location).

• Install a plugin

  Why separate action for add. Maybe just fetch plugin?

  • Because we need to modify project's files and dir structure to cretate a valid IDE/build system project.

  What with plugins, beacuse they will modify the www folder as well?

  • Possible options:
    • Apply plugin modifications to www dir each time when build.
    • Store plugins' made modifications in separate dir - generate once, after plugin install, apply each time before build.

• Prepare project

• Compile project

• Build a project

  • These all are closely related, so probably prepare as a separate step is not needed? Do prepare always before build and remove compile at all.

• Run an app

• Emulate app

  • Emulate in general is not required, because it is equal to run with target==emulator.

Future workflow.

* Create a htm+js app - simply www folder with content + config.xml file
* Add a platform - just fetches platform from NPM to local node_modules. Probably might add info about installed platforms to project.xml/.json file, which is just a project description. Possible alternative - add it to config.xml - unwanted, since this info unrelated to app's runtime, but describes a build environment.
* Add a plugin - similar to adding a platform.

> Staging area is a directory, where intermediate platform projects is being stored. Required for caching platform projects to remove the performance gap while building a huge projects. The staging dir should be updated only when new plugins get added (update platform project configs, add new sorce files/libs, etc.) or when new platform is being added (add new platform project to staging area).

* Build - multiple steps.
	* If platform project is not staged yet, do it now. This includes creating of IDE template, adding plugin
	* Copy www dir to staging/platform project

TBD....

Concept:

• CLI - only an orchestrator for ProjectApi && PlatformApi + env variables and command line arguments parser.
• LIB - collection of classes & utils (see grunt API as an example: http://gruntjs.com/api/grunt ). Proposed members:
  • ConfigParser
  • Events module
  • Utils:
    • Superspawn
• Plugin - a storage of js and native sources, www assets and libs for implementing particular functionality + installation description, ie. will be left as is.