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Purple Dragon
Purple Dragon

Reputation: 5298

Difference between PhoneGap and Cordova and which one should we install?

I have been tasked with developing an Android and iOS application with PhoneGap (http://phonegap.com/)

However, as I read, things start to get really complicated: Some people say Cordova (http://cordova.apache.org/) is now PhoneGap, others say PhoneGap is just a distribution of PhoneGap.I lost 3 days and still can't find a proper way or a guide to install a fully functional PhoneGap plugin either in Eclipse or Netbeans running Ubuntu 12.04 64-bit.

What I tried: 1. Installing Eclipse, installing MDS AppLaud Phonegap Plugin (http://marketplace.eclipse.org/content/applaud-phonegap-android-jslintjshint#.Utf1JPiSTh8). This one actually installed at once, and it actually lets me create a new PhoneGap project in Eclipse, however, the I cannot select any SDK different than 4.4. (?!) 2. Installed NetBeans and after I tried to install phonegap and cordove through nodeJS it failed, again.

My question is: Which one I should install and how to do it in Ubuntu, using either Eclipse of NetBeans?!

Edit: OK guys, I just found out how to install nodeJS and PhoneGap on Ubuntu 12.04: http://paste2.org/1OnX6M6F . Still trying to integrate it in some IDE for the real thing, though!

Upvotes: 6

Views: 7237

Answers (3)

Purple Dragon
Purple Dragon

Reputation: 5298

OK, to put it simple:

PhoneGap - The original project developed by volunteers

Cordova - The Apache's version of Phonegap, which has exactly the same documentation and functionality as the original PhoneGap but is integrated in NetBeans 7.4.

Upvotes: -2

Falco Preiseni
Falco Preiseni

Reputation: 476

Look at http://docs.phonegap.com. Read the "Overview chapter, then "Platform Guides" and "The Command-Line Interface". Follow the steps and in the end you should be able to build your app. It takes a while but it's worth it.

I havn't integrated cordova/phonegap in my IDE. I just created the app with the command line interface. In netbeans I created a HTML5 project and linked the app-root/www directory into this project. I'm programming with Netbeans and building and running the app with the command line interface. That's all.

In order to have some code completion, I have written an extra class (facade) which encapsulates the phonegap code. It just delegates its calls to the phonegap API. That is especially nice if the phonegap API changes as it only affects my code in that particular facade class.

The last thing I want to share: I found out that the build and run process with the command line interface is pretty slow. Executing cordova prepare android and then running the android project in Eclipse/ADT is a lot faster.

Upvotes: 2

Drew B.
Drew B.

Reputation: 1145

If you want to basically start developing an app, I suggest this for PhoneGap:

These are the steps I used to install PhoneGap on Ubuntu. Take note, this is for PhoneGap version 2.8.1. Personally I was not able to get nodeJS to install the latest. If you need the latest to be installed, check around on google. Referencing This tutorial.

Step 1 Install Java 7 JDK

Step 2 Install ANT

Step 3 Download & Extract PG v2.8.1

Step 4 Download Android SDK

Step 5 Set up environment variables

Step 6 Create base project

./create location/to/put/project package_name project_name

Step 7 Import Project into Eclipse

  • File->New->Android->Android Project From Existing Code
  • Browse to where you placed the project and select it

Now you can start developing.

Reminder: This is the way to do it for v2.8.1 of PhoneGap. Different versions(especially 3.*) will be different (nodeJS)

Upvotes: 3

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