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Is it possible to run RoboVM under Windows or do I need to have MacOS available somewhere?

If not, is there an alternative (that also creates as-close-to-native-as-possible output) that does run under Windows?

Markus A.
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  • It says in the "Requirements" page of RoboVM that you require a Mac. Also AFAIK for iOS development you always need Mac OS X (at the very least for code signing) – UnholySheep Oct 20 '14 at 22:16
  • There is an option of hosting them in the cloud which is what we do at Codename One and what PhoneGap build does for HTML apps. – Shai Almog Oct 21 '14 at 16:14
  • You could try running a virtual environment. I bought a macbook just to run robovm and it was worth it. – Kai Qing Oct 21 '14 at 16:40
  • @KaiQing I was thinking that, too... Unfortunately running Mac OS in Virtualbox or something is against the license agreement, so I won't be able to do that for production purposes... Sound like I might also have to shell out some crazy amount of money for inferior hardware... Looks like the Mac Mini is one of the least terrible when it comes to value... But unfortunately I need to decide right when I buy it how much money to spend on RAM upgrades since you can't do those later (I hate Apple)... Do you have a feeling whether 4GB should be sufficient for RoboVM? – Markus A. Oct 21 '14 at 19:42
  • You can add more RAM to any mac machine. I immediately put 2 8gb chips in my mac mini as soon as I set it up. However, my macbook still has the factory 4gb installed and it has no problems running robovm. I strongly dislike apple as a company as well, but I don't think their computers are any more or less capable than PC. Especially for this kind of thing. Running the simulators is pretty smooth and I tend to have photoshop running along side it. – Kai Qing Oct 21 '14 at 19:51
  • @KaiQing Unfortunately, the new Mac Mini has the RAM soldered directly onto the mainboard, so while you probably *can* upgrade it with enough patience, it's probably quite risky and might involve specialized tools (no idea, if they use BGA-chips for example, which would be **very** hard to deal with)... The cheapest Mac Mini goes for $499 these days and comes with a 1.4GHz dual core i5 and 4GB of RAM... Should be enough for development, so I'll probably get that one. – Markus A. Oct 21 '14 at 21:23
  • @KaiQing By "inferior hardware" I only meant relative to the price point. Of course the components they use are probably not of any worse quality, they just charge more for the same thing. For example, if you build yourself a box that is equivalent in performance to the Mac Mini at Newegg (Intel NUC BOXD54250WYKH1 + 500GB Seagate ST500LT012 + 4G GSkill F3-12800CL9D-4GBSQ) you only pay $450, so 10% less... And it's fully customizable later, if you need to... – Markus A. Oct 21 '14 at 21:26
  • By that standard then yeah I agree. I didn't know new mac minis had soldered ram. ridiculous and an obvious ploy to get users to buy upgrades and funnel them into only products apple profits by. However, if in the long run it means one code base to deploy iOS and android apps in java instead of objective C then I'll buy into that BS. So far I have been pretty happy with robovm on my mac and it indeed does compile to c as promised so I would just bite it and buy the mac mini and adapt to the other massive inconveniences that come with the change. – Kai Qing Oct 21 '14 at 22:03
  • @KaiQing Will do. I'm excited about the whole Java-to-Everything model as well! If you don't know it yet, make sure you take a look at GWT (Google Web Toolkit). With that, you can use the same code-base to build websites as well (it compiles Java to JavaScript and does a phenomenal job with it)! Blackberry also uses Java. And with BD-J you can even code Apps for blu-ray players in Java. So now the only thing missing is Windows Phone... Blarf... :) – Markus A. Oct 21 '14 at 22:24

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There was a project to compile RoboVM on Windows but its goal was not to create iOS apps. Even if you could do that you would not be able to use the native iOS simulator which RoboVM relies on, it also needs xcode installed so I'm guessing that won't work.

Codename One allows using Windows/Linux with the cloud build although I'm not sure if it satisfies your close to native concept. The apps are native and have access to native functionality/Objective-C but most of the UI is rendered on top of Open GL.

Shai Almog
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  • The thing I'm worried about with all these cloud-build services is protection of IP. If I understand correctly, Codename One only sends the compiled class-files to the cloud rather than the full source, so there is at least some obfuscation, but I think I will still have to send them my certificate to sign the final app, which is something I'd rather not do... Or do you know if there is a way to have the build be completed in the cloud but doing the signing locally myself? – Markus A. Oct 21 '14 at 16:32
  • The system is heavily secured and our actual build servers are hidden. Your certificate isn't a big deal since its useless without access to your account so assuming you give it a different password from your itunes/play accounts then you still have another layer of protection. If you are in a heavily regulated industry (e.g. government, banking etc) we sell private clouds too. – Shai Almog Oct 21 '14 at 23:19