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Date: Wed, 16 Oct 2013 10:47:05 -0700
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Subject: Re: config.xml discussion, we need to talk
From: Joe Bowser <bowserj@gmail.com>
To: "Wargo, John" <john.wargo@sap.com>
Cc: "<dev@cordova.apache.org>" <dev@cordova.apache.org>
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On Wed, Oct 16, 2013 at 10:13 AM, Wargo, John <john.wargo@sap.com> wrote:
> Joe,
>
> What is your issue with the CLI?  Isn't not using it making your life mor=
e difficult if you're doing cordova development (An app which includes one =
or more plugins).  I assumed that with 3.0 everyone would use the Cli for t=
heir cordova (not cordova plugin) development.  What am I missing?
>

I was going to keep quiet, because this is going to make me extremely
unpopular with the people who worked and promoted the CLI, since I've
mostly left them alone until now. The CLI actually makes your life
more difficult if you're making anything more complex than hello
world.  If you care about details, you'll want the source code for
Android and iOS at the very least.

The biggest problem with the CLI is the fact that it hides the
platforms in the .cordova directory and that if you're an advanced
user of Cordova you have no way to make custom modifications to the
source code on a per-project basis.  We've run into this numerous
times where certain things need to be modified on a webview on 3.0
that you can't easily do anymore.  Now, these changes by themselves
are individual edge cases, which I don't want to see put in the XML of
the project, but if you hide the source, you end up having to do crazy
things like declare Java code in XML to override these cases.  I think
that people should be able to modify the code and use it whichever way
they want and that they should be able to do this on a per-project
basis if they want, and I view the CLI as something that gets in the
way of that, which is why I have such a low opinion of it.

The CLI also makes it much harder for the CordovaWebView use case
where you use Cordova as a small part of a larger native application.
Given that this was one of the big features of PhoneGap 2.0, it makes
no sense for us to make it harder to use that feature.

Finally, I have yet to see anyone actually release a real application
to the App Store or the Play Store with it.  Developing an application
is great, but if I can't release it, then the tool is absolutely
worthless.  While the CLI may look impressive in demos in front of an
audience, it's not helpful in reality.

Joe