PhoneGap CLI

Overview

PhoneGap Build is an easy to use service for creating native apps. However, you can also use PhoneGap CLI with AppStudio. It has the following advantages:

• Build takes place on your local machine - no uploading to a service
• Free - PhoneGap CLI is open source.
• No limit on number of projects
• Use the latest plugins: Sometime developers have newer versions of their plugin that are not in PhoneGap Build yet.
• Use PlugIns which are not in PhoneGap Build at all.
• Use custom PlugIns you have developed yourself.

But there are some disadvantages:

• Much more complicated to get working
• More difficult to use
• More difficult to sign apps for release

Install Tools

You need to do the following steps:

1. Install Node.js
2. Install Android SDK
3. Install Java Development Toolkit (JDK)
4. Install Apache ANT
5. Set user variables
6. Add items to PATH
7. Install Cordova

There is a good tutorial on doing this here: http://www.scribd.com/doc/242544944/Phone-Gap

Create PhoneGap Project Files

PhoneGap CLI looks for a number of files in your project folder (or elsewhere if you have specified in Preferences). When you start a new project, you need to run a command to initialize the the directories. When you do a deploy from AppStudio, it updates these directories with your code.

To initialize a project so you can use it with PhoneGap CLI, use these commands in your project folder:

cordova create phonegap com.example.helloworld HelloWorld
cd phonegap
cordova platform add android

This will create a phonegap directory in your project and set it to make Android apps.