Update for Customers Using PhoneGap and PhoneGap Build

PhoneGap’s goal has been to bring the full power of the web to mobile applications and enable mobile developers to create performant apps with a single codebase. Since the project’s beginning in 2008, the market has evolved and Progressive Web Apps (PWAs) now bring the power of native apps to web applications. PWAs are increasingly bridging the gap between web and native mobile apps through capabilities such as offline support, push notifications, home-screen icons and full-screen view control without the need for containers.

In the context of these developments and declining PhoneGap usage, Adobe is focusing on providing a platform that enables developers to build, extend, customize and integrate with Adobe products. Today, we are announcing the end of development for PhoneGap and PhoneGap Build and the end of our investment in Apache Cordova. The PhoneGap Build service will be discontinued on October 1, 2020.

To ensure a smooth transition for your mobile app through the PhoneGap end of life timeline, we have developed the following options:

• Apache Cordova, the open source fork of the PhoneGap project will continue to exist and offers a great pathway for most developers. Refer to the Cordova getting started guide for building locally as an alternative to PhoneGap Build and using Cordova-based tools as an alternative to the PhoneGap-specific workflows.
• We have worked with Ionic to help customers with the transition experience and to enable them to continue to build their applications in the cloud. Refer to this documentation for best practices on moving your application to Ionic Appflow.
• There are also a number of alternative products to which you may want to consider migrating your PhoneGap app including:
  - Monaca (refer to their PhoneGap Migration Guide) & Onsen UI (front-end UI framework)
  - Framework7
  - NativeScript
  - Ionic Capacitor
  - Progressive Web Apps

Q. What will happen to existing mobile app content developed with PhoneGap?

The project (mobile app content) created by PhoneGap is compatible with Apache Cordova. Please refer to the getting started guide for setting Cordova up on your development machine.

Q. Can I continue using PhoneGap after Adobe discontinues its support?

PhoneGap will remain free and open sourced, however it will not be actively developed. Gradually, as iOS and Android operating system updates are released, the PhoneGap tooling will become incompatible with the latest version of Apache Cordova. Additionally, hosted services will be removed as soon as Oct 1, 2020. We recommend migrating to Apache Cordova to stay up-to-date on the latest releases.

PhoneGap Build, however, is not an open sourced project so this offering will be unavailable starting on October 1, 2020.

Q. What happens to my file stored on PhoneGap Build after October 1, 2020?

The service will be shut down and all stored files will be deleted. All data must be retrieved by September 30, 2020.

Q: What other open source initiatives is Adobe supporting?

In addition to Adobe’s continued investment in the Magento platform and Magento open source community, Adobe recently open sourced its React Spectrum libraries and tools to help developers build adaptive, accessible, and robust user experiences for web applications.

The PhoneGap and Apache Cordova team at Adobe will continue to develop open source tools and libraries as we work to make open source communities an integral part of Adobe’s developer platform.