This release, Oxygene 6.1.55.1371, is mostly a bugfix release, but it also contains a handful of significant improvements and new features.
iOS 7.0
On the iOS side, a lot has changed over the past few weeks. Apple has released the final version of iOS 7.0; they have also started shipping two new iPhones, one of them with an all new 64-bit ARM CPU, the A7, and there is also a brand new version of Apple’s IDE — Xcode 5.
While Oxygene has been working well with iOS since it hit beta in June (just a few days after we officially shipped Oxygene for Cocoa), this new release adds official support for iOS 7.0 and Xcode 5. This affects several areas.
First and most importantly, with iOS out from under the NDA, we’re able to ship .fx files for iOS 7.0 in the installer, making it easier (and the default) to build your apps for the 7.0 SDK, without you having to run FXGen yourself to get access to the new SDK.
iOS 7 is not just a new look (although that is a big part of it), but also brings with it a huge amount of new APIs that you can start using in your apps immediately. From TextKit to SpriteKit, from enhancements in UIKit to more options for background operations (such as updating content in your app while it is not running).
There’s a lot for developers to love in iOS 7, and you have full access to it from Oxygene.
What’s more, in last month’s update we shipped significant enhancements to Deployment Target support in Oxygene, which makes it really easy to take advantage of iOS 7, while still supporting older versions of iOS at the same time.
Apple’s new Xcode 5 has changes that affected our process for working with XIB and Storyboards, forcing us to rethink how this is handled – with the end result that we now have a much better and more flexible solution in place. A new menu item in Visual Studio will let you create/update a full Xcode project that will contain all your .XIB and .storyboard files, along with knowledge about other items in your project, including your classes, but also resources such as images.
Once created/updated, you can simply open the project in Xcode and edit your UI files to your heart’s content. Save, and when you go back to Visual Studio and build your app, your changes will get picked up automatically.
We have also made improvements to the iOS Simulator integration. Just as in Xcode 5, Oxygene now lets you choose exactly which type of simulator you want your application to run on — not just iPhone vs. iPad, but also screen size, and whether to use the Retina screen or not. Right from the CrossBox menu:
The September 2013 release also includes support for the all new 64-bit iOS Simulator. When building for iOS 7 (or later), you can now select x86_64 as second iOS Simulator architecture to build for, and get your iOS apps ready for the A7 chip.
Support for arm64 for building applications to run as 64-bit on the device is working in our labs and will be available for the next (October 2013) update and in our current beta builds. Unfortunately, it did not make it into the September release due to timing issues – we figured you would probably want us to test extensively on real hardware, before shipping a compiler to you. Real hardware which has only been available for little over a week now, of course.
Java
Three significant improvements have been made on the Java and Android platform, as well.
First, we have implemented support for Java Native Interface (JNI) in the compiler, making it really easy to access non-Java libraries and APIs from your application.
Secondly, we have expanded our syntax for Inline Interfaces to allow them to be descendants of existing abstract or concrete classes. This has been a much-requested feature from Android developers, and will make many Android APIs much easier to consume.
Finally, we have updated the compiler to be compatible with binary format changes coming in Java 8. While Java 8 (currently still in beta and very much in flux) is not an officially supported platform yet, this will allow you to get started experimenting. This is exciting news for those of you living on the cutting edge.
There’s More
These features are rounded off by over 70 additional fixes, enhancements and improvements, all throughout the product, and across all three platforms, .NET, Cocoa and Java.
We’re very excited about this update – and about what we have still planned for the rest of the year – and we hope you will like it, too!
Yours,
marc hoffman
Chief Architect
