Building for iOS can be very time consuming. Every time you make changes to a Cordova web app you need to do a cordova build to update the app project. Then you have to go into Xcode to debug on device. But if you don’t need to make changes to native code and you only need to update web elements like HTML, Javascript, image and media files then you can save time by just updating those bits.
I’ve made a Hotwire IPA bash script to replace the ‘www’ web app folder with the updated directory. All you need to do is create an ‘*.ipa’ archive and the hotwire script can quickly update it with all web app changes and deploy to device (without need to jailbreak).
sh hotwire-ipa.sh -f ~/Desktop/app.ipa -d "www" -p ~/Cordova/app/www -b ~/Cordova/app/platforms/ios/www -i
where:
-f is the path to *.ipa archive
-d is the dir to delete inside app
-p is the dir to copy in place
-b is the dir with Cordova build plugins and scripts
Setup and instructions for deploying iOS app using hotwire-ipa over on GitHub.
3m 09s - Each time you update web files you need to execute cordova build ios to stage the updates.
0m 38s - Open in Xcode
8m 10s - Debug from Xcode
To run the script we need to first create an Archive and export it as an *.ipa archive in Xcode. Once this is done then future updates can be pushed using the script.
2m 53s - Create Archive
2m 13s - Export as .ipa
4m 39s - Deploy to device using hotwire-ipa script with -i switch to install as *.ipa instead of *.app.
cordova build ios)That’s 3 minutes 12 seconds saved the first time if you have already done cordova build ios just to compile the native code, then 7 minutes 18 seconds saved to deploy repeated web app updates.
All times recorded using Postcard web app (using ‘Story_0’ branch) on MacBook 1.2 GHz Intel Core M