[ekwogefee]

Cross-platform support was very important for my app, and I was the only developer. The app is an offline file sharing utility (1) with no servers involved. I wanted to support iOS, Android, Windows Phone, Windows Desktop, Mac OSX and Linux.

Initially, I built the offline file sharing app natively on each platform. That approach was tedious to build and maintain. It was scary adding new features because I had to do the same thing on every platform the app supports.

Then I did a major rewrite. I wanted at least 90% of the code to be shared across all platforms (desktop and mobile). Looking at React Native, it wouldn't have served my purpose. I ended up with C/C++ (for logic and network) and HTML/CSS/AngularJS (for the UI). Best decision ever.

The app needed a more advanced file browser for users to select files. The app's file browser performed very poorly when I tried implementing it with an HTML UI, and frankly would have required more work to optimize across all platforms. So I implemented the file browser natively on all platforms the app supports.

Overall, this approach has worked pretty well for me. And even though it is not as optimal as going native on each platform, I can fix bugs and implement new features much faster now.

(1) http://www.feem.io

[bschwindHN]

That's fantastic! C++ is totally the right call for that situation, React Native is mostly focused on Android and iOS it seems.

Do you have any articles about your experience developing Feem? I have a project underway that also targets Android, iOS, Windows, Mac, and Linux and I'd be curious to hear how you have things set up in terms of build systems, what was the most painful platform to work with, etc.

[ekwogefee]

Core - C++

UI - HTML/CSS/AngularJS (1.x)

Git - Separate repositories for UI and Core.

iOS - Cordova (just for the initial setup). Modified XCode project to include changes from the Core and UI git repositories. Added some native iOS code. Bridge between Core, Native and UI done with objective C++.

android - Cordova (just for the initial setup). Modified Android Studio project to include changes from the Core and UI git repositories. Added some native Android code. Bridge between Core, Native and UI done with NDK/JNI.

windows UWP - Cordova (just for the initial setup). Modified Visual Studio C++ project to include changes from the Core and UI git repositories. Added some native UWP code. Bridge between Core, Native and UI done with C++/CX.

Mac, Windows Desktop, Linux - Qt. Modified Qt Creator project to include code from the Core and UI git repositories. Added some "native" QT code. Bridge between Core, Native and UI done with Qt's C++.

Browser differences was a huge PITA. It was still worth it, though, compared to writing the same UI in different platforms and programming languages.

If you need more info on the build process, you can shoot me an email. My email is in my profile.

[bschwindHN]

Thanks! Pretty clever to use Cordova to generate the initial project structures.