Phonegap & Cordova, the story

Many people are disturbed by these two projects which are similar and different in the same time.

Historically, the project was named Phonegap and the startup behind it is Nitobi Software. In 2011, Adobe acquired that company and gave the project to the Apache foundation, which renamed it Cordova.

I still don’t know precisely why they didn’t keep all the project in the company. Maybe it’s to keep a good relation with the open source community. Oracle has an execrable relation while Adobe and Microsoft improved themself a lot. That’s nice to see because you know the project isn’t ruled by the company.

But Phonegap didn’t die. It’s the Adobe version of Cordova. For now, there are no differences between the projects (except the plugins, I discuss at the end of the article) but tomorrow, Adobe could have some closed source parts on its project while Cordova will always be open source.

In fact, the main contributors are Adobe employees, who commit first on Cordova and update after Phonegap. So until interesting features appear on Phonegap, I advice you to use Cordova.

The only difference between these two projects is the plugins. They have two different repositories. Most of the plugins are working in both platforms, but Phonegap Build (presented below) accepts only the Phonegap one.

You have to know that Phonegap isn’t only the webview/native layer :

Phonegap Build
It’s an online service that build your Phonegap application in the cloud for all the compatible platforms. It has interesting features :

• You don’t need to have Mac OS X or Windows to build for their mobile platforms
• The hydrated mode allows you to update the files of your app on the fly without updating the entire executable. Handy for development and testing

Phonegap Developer App
This new project is pretty amazing. To be short, it’s an app available in the AppStore, Google Play Store and soon in the Windows Market; that connects to a local server (there is a CLI tool) and execute your app in itself (inception!) :

• No need of packaging your app to test it
• Don’t need to have a Mac or Developer licence to execute your app in the device
• Automatic refresh via the included Grunt watch

Phonegap Debug
It’s a hosted Weinre server, a remote WebInspector for your devices. It’s not the best solution to debug :

• It’s slow because the debugger is remote (The same speed as Node Inspector if you use a local instance)
• It’s linked to a page. If there is a redirection, you can’t debug anymore
• You need to be online or setup a local server