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Future direction of the XDK

xdk_d_
Beginner
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Forgive me if this has been asked/answered before, but I could not find it. Is the future of the XDK for the use of building apps for the store still a major focus for Intel, now and in the future? I ask because based on the traffic on the forums, the future seems bleak for what I am hoping to do. I didnt to a ton of research, but it seems that the number of actual Intel employees responding to forum posts is dwindeling. Can anyone confirm this? What happened to everyone else that was helping users? I just want to know what I am getting myself into should I select the Intel XDK as a platform for development.

Any and all advice would be greatly welcomed before taking a dive into the XDK.

 

 

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PaulF_IntelCorp
Employee
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xdk d -- The Intel XDK is changing to focus on the development of IoT apps and IoT companion apps.

An "IoT Companion App" is a mobile Cordova app that's been optimized for use with IoT devices and IoT cloud services. What that means, regarding mobile apps, is that our system will focus on creating Cordova mobile apps that use Cordova plugins that are useful for communicating with apps running on IoT devices and for communicating with cloud services that designed for use with IoT devices.

Mobile apps that you create with the XDK are standard Cordova mobile apps. As the IoT focus of the XDK progresses, if you need to leave the XDK we will provide you with the means to move your mobile app to Cordova CLI. The XDK creates a standard Cordova CLI application, so any app you create with the XDK can be easily built and developed using standard Cordova CLI tools.

Regarding Intel support personnel, none of us works full time on providing support. It has always been this way, we all have other duties we must attend to, beyond support. We are in the process of adding some new support personnel to the forum. Additionally, there are quite a few regular developers who answer questions on this forum. We do try to restrict our support to issues that are specific to the use of the XDK; we are not here to teach people how to write a mobile app or an IoT app. For general help regarding programming problems there are many blogs and forums that provide much better information.

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John_L_11
Beginner
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Paul, does this mean that we will no longer be able to use XDK to build standard mobile apps (apps not needing or utilizing IoT)? Or can we continue to use XDK to update our existing HTML5/Cordova apps and/or build new standard mobile apps?

Really LOVE using XDK to build mobile apps and hoping to continue using it in the future.

 

"Mobile apps that you create with the XDK are standard Cordova mobile apps. As the IoT focus of the XDK progresses, if you need to leave the XDK we will provide you with the means to move your mobile app to Cordova CLI. The XDK creates a standard Cordova CLI application, so any app you create with the XDK can be easily built and developed using standard Cordova CLI tools."

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PaulF_IntelCorp
Employee
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John -- an IoT companion app is a mobile app.

As this post and several others indicate, we are changing our focus to supporting IoT apps (apps that run on IoT devices) plus what we call IoT companion apps. An IoT companion app is simply a mobile app that augments, supports, interacts with, etc. an IoT app. We are no longer focusing on enabling gaming apps and generic mobile apps (e.g., we recently deprecated the Game Asset Manager tool, which will be removed in a future release). We’ve actually been supporting IoT apps in the XDK for two years now, so this is not a new feature of the XDK, simply a refined focus regarding our mobile efforts.

The features we’ve deprecated (announced for retirement) can all be replaced by existing well-supported open source and free tools. We’re in the process of adding documentation on how to use those free and open-source tools to perform the same functions. So we don’t plan to leave anyone “out in the cold” as features are retired from the XDK. Using some of these alternate tools may not have the same level of convenience that the XDK provided, but they are generally more current and up-to-date than what is being provided by the XDK, and are, for most developers, the better tool to use.

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Hamilton_Tenório_da_
Valued Contributor I
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:-(

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Ad
New Contributor III
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Paul - Thanks for you open and clear answers about the direction of XDK

I agree that most of the features which are deprecated can be replaced by existing open source or free tools. The XDK was providing us a very complete and nice IDE with all features in one place. Especially the BUILD option is very nice and important, there are not so many alternatives where you can make and build your app for Android or iOS so easy. Are there any plans to deprecate the BUILD option too?

We are using the XDK for many projects, we really like it and we hope to the BUILD support will remain in the XDK (forever ;-)

Ad

 

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PaulF_IntelCorp
Employee
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Hi Ad -- sorry, but I cannot comment on future product plans and roadmaps, it's against company policy to share information like that on a public forum. We will keep you informed, via release notes, in product notes, and on the forum as the product moves forward regarding changes, additions and deletions in the product.

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Muhammad_Y_Efendi
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Sorry, I never use Cordova CLI, sorry if someone asked you before.

About Cordova CLI, is it the url that we can use to run Cordova CLI ?

https://cordova.apache.org/docs/en/latest/guide/cli/

Thanks,

 

 

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PaulF_IntelCorp
Employee
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Muhammad -- Cordova CLI is a Node.js tool you install on your system to perform the sorts of builds that we build in the cloud with the XDK. It also requires installation of Android Studio to build for Android, Xcode (on a Mac) to build for iOS and Visual Studio (on a Windows machine) to build for Windows. If you are interested in using Cordova CLI directly, please see this post > https://software.intel.com/en-us/forums/intel-xdk/topic/685326#comment-1885369 <

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Sam_Suresh
Beginner
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This is a very bad news.

Me and many have developed teaching modules and syllabi and now turn out to be dark future.

Removing ionic is a bad decision. As many still using the App Designer, Intel should really consider having ionic or at least 2 framework support.

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Geoff_at_CFM
Beginner
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Hi Paul,

Thanks for the honest answers to these questions.

I have been using Ionic 2 recently for mobile app development which uses the Cordova CLI and it is not a big deal to use it.

Can you explain in more detail, or provide a link that explains, what the benefits of developing for IoT are compared to developing for mobile devices?

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PaulF_IntelCorp
Employee
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Geoff -- it's not that there is a benefit for developing IoT apps over mobile apps, they are quite different apps; the point is that we are focusing the tool to emphasize IoT app development, especially since the free and open-source tools available for developing, debugging and building Cordova mobile apps have now become quite mature. We will continue to support the development of Cordova mobile apps, but will rely more heavily on these freely available tools, rather than try to compete with them. The product today supports the creation of two basic types of apps: IoT apps and mobile Cordova apps. When we say "IoT companion apps" we simply mean a mobile Cordova app that is focused on working with an IoT app and any supporting IoT cloud services. As the product progresses it will make more sense.
 

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Alex_Hang
New Contributor II
3,029 Views

Hi Paul, I have one question.

I am very pleased with what Intel XDk has now,I don't need IOT, I only need the App Designer and I want to stay at this version. If I don't want to upgrade to the future versions, will I be forced to upgrade or can I stay at this version as long as I want?

                                                                                                                         Thank you, and sorry for the question

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PaulF_IntelCorp
Employee
3,029 Views

We cannot guarantee that older versions will continue to work. We only actively support and document the most recent versions.

You are certainly welcome to continue to use older versions, but some features, especially those that rely on our backend services, may quit working or work incorrectly when those backend services they rely upon change.

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Rafael_H_
Beginner
3,029 Views

Paul F. (Intel) wrote:

Geoff -- it's not that there is a benefit for developing IoT apps over mobile apps, they are quite different apps; the point is that we are focusing the tool to emphasize IoT app development, especially since the free and open-source tools available for developing, debugging and building Cordova mobile apps have now become quite mature. We will continue to support the development of Cordova mobile apps, but will rely more heavily on these freely available tools, rather than try to compete with them. The product today supports the creation of two basic types of apps: IoT apps and mobile Cordova apps. When we say "IoT companion apps" we simply mean a mobile Cordova app that is focused on working with an IoT app and any supporting IoT cloud services. As the product progresses it will make more sense.
 

 

ok this part: "We will continue to support the development of Cordova mobile apps, but will rely more heavily on these freely available tools"  Can you name 1?

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PaulF_IntelCorp
Employee
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Rafael -- see the release notes for today's product release. It contains references to a variety of free open-source tools that provide the same functionality as those functions that were deprecated and, with this release, have been retired > https://software.intel.com/en-us/xdk/docs/release-notes-information-intel-xdk < These same tools were already referenced during the deprecation phase by following the deprecation notices in the product or by inspecting the relevant pages in the documentation.

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Rafael_H_
Beginner
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Paul F. (Intel) wrote:

Rafael -- see the release notes for today's product release. It contains references to a variety of free open-source tools that provide the same functionality as those functions that were deprecated and, with this release, have been retired > https://software.intel.com/en-us/xdk/docs/release-notes-information-inte... < These same tools were already referenced during the deprecation phase by following the deprecation notices in the product or by inspecting the relevant pages in the documentation.

 

I see cool, I hope I can make any debugger work cause I depended on that tab :(

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Rafael_H_
Beginner
3,029 Views

Just visited the iot intel site I see where this is going now sad :(  http://store.reconinstruments.com/Recon-Jet

 

 

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Rafael_H_
Beginner
3,029 Views

Ok last question, should we be looking into migratin out of Intel XDK if we are not planing to develop iot stuff?

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PaulF_IntelCorp
Employee
3,029 Views

Rafael -- the XDK is still very useful for building mobile apps, which it will still support. Our focus will be mobile apps designed to support IoT devices and IoT cloud services (in addition to IoT apps). If you are developing games, you may not be happy with the direction of the XDK. If you are developing straight forward HTML5 mobile apps the XDK should continue to be of value to you.

Ultimately, you'll have to be the judge of whether or not the XDK will work for your mobile app development needs. Keep in mind that the XDK mobile app project always has been a front-end for standard Cordova apps. So moving between the XDK and a Cordova app is not that difficult (because an XDK mobile app is a Cordova app) -- we'll be publishing some detailed docs on how to move between the two. For now, here is a summary of how to move to Cordova CLI, if that is your preference > https://software.intel.com/en-us/forums/intel-xdk/topic/685326#comment-1885441 <

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Rafael_H_
Beginner
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Paul F. (Intel) wrote:

Rafael -- the XDK is still very useful for building mobile apps, which it will still support. Our focus will be mobile apps designed to support IoT devices and IoT cloud services (in addition to IoT apps). If you are developing games, you may not be happy with the direction of the XDK. If you are developing straight forward HTML5 mobile apps the XDK should continue to be of value to you.

Ultimately, you'll have to be the judge of whether or not the XDK will work for your mobile app development needs. Keep in mind that the XDK mobile app project always has been a front-end for standard Cordova apps. So moving between the XDK and a Cordova app is not that difficult (because an XDK mobile app is a Cordova app) -- we'll be publishing some detailed docs on how to move between the two. For now, here is a summary of how to move to Cordova CLI, if that is your preference > https://software.intel.com/en-us/forums/intel-xdk/topic/685326#comment-1... <

 

Thanks as long as the Cordova supports remains it is still very useful, I'm developing games, but never had use for game assets and none of that, to me XDK is most valuable because of the building capabilities and the centralized enviroment, Thanks again.

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