PhoneGap Build Woes

Posted: October 12, 2011 | | Categories: Mobile Development

I was planning on being about halfway through the book by the end of last week, but my travel schedule and several very full weekends have kept me from reaching that goal. I'm this close to finishing the chapter on PhoneGap Build, but I'm really making very little progress no matter how much work I put into it.

The problem I'm having is that the PhoneGap Build service is working out to be very unstable. Granted I have been working with an Alpha version of the service which only recently switched to Beta status, but as I'm working through the examples for the chapter, once I fix one problem, another pops up.  First there was a problem with dashes in JavaScript file names on BlackBerry, which doesn't affect RIM's tools, but seems to intermittently affect PhoneGap Build. Next came an issue with the iOS signing process – which is something I've not worked much with and was happy to finally figure out. Now that I finally have an installable iOS application, the PhoneGap Build service now consistently times-out when building the BlackBerry version of the application.

All I want is a complete build, something that shows my test application built for every supported OS, but I just can't seem to get there. That's all I need before I write about debug mode then I can put this chapter to rest.

My goal is to finish this (hopefully) today then spend the rest of the week doing the Windows Phone chapter. That will put me solidly halfway done and I can spend the rest of the year working on the chapters on the PhoneGap API's. Wish me luck!

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