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I am completely new to mobile development and i interested to hybrid apps and of course Intel XDK. When i reading Intel XDK's documentations i faced to "runtime" word.

What is mean of this phrase and actually what is it's mean when they saying

Crosswalk is a HTML5 runtime, ...

in their blog post.

Apologize me if I asking one of stackoverflow's stupid questions.

bobsilon
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2 Answers2

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"Runtime" generally refers to the time a program runs, as opposed to other times in the programs life cycle like compile time. Software is typically written, then compiled, then deployed or installed, then run. These different phases are often referred to as "compile time", "install time" and "runtime". E.g. "at compile time, the compiler will ...".

"A runtime" is a software package that is necessary at, well, runtime. E.g. a library, interpreter, virtual machine or other such supporting packages. Crosswalk is a system that takes in HTML 5 "apps" (including HTML, Javascript etc.) and, well, makes them work. Executes them. Runs them. It's essentially a browser engine, but not packaged as a browser, just as a system that can interpret and run HTML 5, which you can embed into whatever other software you want.

So you could write your application in HTML 5; then to make that work like a native desktop application which can be downloaded and installed, you write a tiny Windows application and an OS X application which basically just contains Crosswalk, which runs your actual application inside it, cross-platform.

deceze
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Run-time - the length of time it takes to execute a software program

The Intel XDK includes the Crosswalk runtime as a supported target of the cloud-based build service.

Crosswalk runtime can be used for creating HTML5 application with a dedicated runtime that can be run on multiple platforms without any dependency for webview. It can be used for creating application that uses HTML5 features like WebRTC, hardware-accelerated WebGL support and bleeding edge HTML5 features.

For more information please follow this resources.. crosswalk-runtime

more resources : Using the Intel XDK “Crosswalk for Android”

Community
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Md Rashedul Hoque Bhuiyan
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  • Thanks shuvrow for answering. But I still don't know why the phrase 'runtime' followed by crosswalk. Is it because of running crosswalk in back-end while the application in execution mode? – bobsilon Dec 06 '14 at 13:26
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    In this case, "Crosswalk runtime" refers to the "HTML5 interpreter" that "runs" your HTML5 application. Your HTML5 application is a collection of HTML, CSS and JavaScript files. This is analogous to an HTML5 web app that runs inside of a browser. In that case, the web app "runs" on top of the "browser runtime." So as @deceze indicated, Crosswalk is an embedded browser. When you build an app using the XDK's Crosswalk build option, it includes a full copy of Crosswalk, which "interprets" your HTML5 application. – xmnboy Dec 06 '14 at 23:48