XCode May Come to iPhone and iPad in iOS 14 (opens in new tab)

(appleinsider.com)

31 pointsthyselius6y ago7 comments

7 comments

7 comments · 4 top-level

I don't expect this will be much more than the next "evolution" of Playgrounds.

I don't think Apple would even want/be willing to support anything other than Swift, and probably only iOS/Catalyst development. Anything complex with multiple languages (Objective-C, Swift, C, C++ and/or any scripting) would probably not be supported, so there wouldn't be any chance of "porting" your existing projects to this iXcode.

It might be an evolution towards "coding-as-a-service", which I've been expecting: https://macintouch.com/community/index.php?threads/competiti...

zaptrem6y ago

Once iOS has the ability to sign its own apps, the sky is the limit. In fact, we're getting pretty close to this even without Apple's help. UTM can boot Windows 10 using a whacky JIT hack to get QEMU's TCG working for (slow) x86 emulation. It won't be long until someone boots Xcode and compiles a simple app (though it would probably take hours!). https://github.com/utmapp/UTM. On the other hand, many smart people have started to port other languages, such as porting the Python interpreter (https://github.com/holzschu/python3_ios) and C compilers (https://github.com/ColdGrub1384/SeeLess). See the LibTerm project (https://github.com/ColdGrub1384/LibTerm). I can already see someone creating a sandboxed mini-OS with the ability to spawn and manage processes just like a Linux terminal by cheating iOS's Thread API.

However, your forum post says you believe Apple wants to take the power of the ability to locally compile and sign away from developers. This is unlikely for a number of reasons, one of which is completely breaking all games built using non-SceneKit workflows (basically all of them) along with other apps that depend on outside compilers.

pjmlp6y ago

They surely need to support all official iOS SDK languages, which includes Objective-C and C++, otherwise there are a couple of APIs that wouldn't have much use, including stuff like Metal.

MR4D6y ago

Version 1 of Apple products tends to be a good MVP.

It starts bringing people in and getting users’ feedback which leads to better version 2’s and 3’s, etc.

lachlan-sneff6y ago

This will be a lot more useful if we get terminal access as well, even if it's just to a sandbox or container and the ability to link compiled libraries in other languages to our code in this version of xcode.

lilyball6y ago

I find it hard to take seriously a rumor that can't even get the capitalization of Xcode correct.

maliker6y ago

The market is much more interested in Linux/Windows versions. But I guess they still want you to buy the hardware/OS to get the full living-in-the-Apple ecosystem experience to inform what you create for your users.

Disclaimer: I use all Apple gear.

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