Port come2help into a cordova app

[SrTobi]

Hi,

come2help is currently only a webapp. It would be very cool to have it as a native app for different platforms like android, windows and ios as well. The easiest way seems to be cordova, because it simply takes the html/javascript/css code we already have and compiles it into an app that shows the content with the buildin webbrowser.

I already made an attempt to do the conversion and was successfull. You can see the results here.

However, I had to do some drastic changes; especially to the directory structure. It seems that cordova demands a fix structure and one can not change that. Also some additional scripts has to be imported and we don't want them in the website.

In the end we might even want the website to look different from the app. So I would suggest to follow the advises mentioned in this answer and create a repository for app specific content and a repository for shared content (like angularjs services). The later one is than added as git submodul to the website's/app's repo.

[jGleitz]

+1 for a Cordova App.

I don't really like the idea of a second repository.
Can the steps necessary to enable the app for Cordova be automised?
Ideally, we would have a script that takes the app and introduces the necessary steps in the build phase. (If it's only moving around files and adding scripts).
Even introducing platform specific styles could ideally be done by just exchanging some CSS an JavaScript. The Cordova-specific files would then live in the same repository and be applied on build.
That would simplify stuff, we could even put web-specific things in an own folder too, and apply them in build.

Questions:

• Would such an automatic cordova generation be reasonable possible or would the build script need to be adapted on most changes?
• How much additional development effort would Cordova introduce? Can we make most changes to the app without having to alter stuff for cordova? Can the cordova builds be tested automatically, such that we would recognise changes that break the build?

I really like the idea of Cordova, but the more I think about it, the more I fear it'll hold us back in a time we want to move forward as fast as we can. What do you think?

[SrTobi]

What is the problem with a second repository or a git submodule? It separates two different project and shares the code that would be identically. And we are going to want different projects for the website and the app. That way we can implement smart phone specific features and use ionic which will greatly improve the look and feel of our app, I think. And yes, that will generate additional work, but we are enough developers to handle that. And even if we don't develop the app with such high priority as the website we will have everything setup to follow up fast. In the end the most work will be to write the services and controllers. And these we will hopefully be able to share.

There are some tools to create tests for Cordova but that needs definitely some more investigation.

[vzickner]

+1 for a second repository
+1 for a Cordova App