ICPMD: Integrated cross-platform mobile development solution

Abstract

In these days, smartphones become much more used than the personal computers because of the various categories of applications downloadable from the store. The vendors of smartphones support different platforms hence to reach as many users as possible, the developer has to develop the same application for all these platforms using the different tools and programming languages provided by each platform vendor. Therefore the cross-platform mobile applications development solutions were introduced to develop the application once and run it everywhere. The cross-platform solutions use different approaches for native development such as cross-compilation, Model-Driven Development ... etc. None of these approaches claim that it provides a complete solution as they are still under research and development. This paper introduces a new integrated cross-platform mobile development solution that merges between different approaches to benefit from the advantages and minimize the drawbacks of each approach. The main contributions include: explore the approaches used in designing the new solution, explain the research methodology and the new solution architecture along with the implementation, and evaluate the limitations of the new proposed architecture and implementation compared to known solutions. The results show substantial improvement over existing solutions.

Improving mobile app development using transpilers with maintainable outputs

“…For instance, PhoneGap allows users to create "hybrid applications built with HTML, CSS, and JavaScript" [1]; React Native enables the creation of apps "using only JavaScript" with "the same fundamental UI building blocks as regular iOS and Android apps" [10]; and XMLVM can "cross-compile" an Android application so that it will run on iOS [33]. Similarly, the academic literature includes several studies that propose the creation of development tools using new domain-specific languages, such as md2 [16], ScaMo [22], Xmob [11], ICPMD [8], and the Common framework [29,30].…”

A Systematic Mapping Study of Cross-Platform Mobile Apps

“…We found relevant studies that provided an overview for the existing development tools (e.g., (Latif et al, 2017), (Ribeiro et al, 2012) and others). Further, we found some studies that reported the challenges in this field such as (Alamri and Mustafa, 2014); (El-Kassas et al, 2014). This motivated us to apply a rigorous systematic mapping study in order to provide a wide overview for the existing and most recent research in this emergent field.…”

“…The study by (El-Kassas et al, 2014) [S23] aimed to provide an overview for the available cross-platform approaches. They described each approach in details, which are, Cross-Compilation, Virtual Machine, Model-Driven Development, Web-Based, Component-Based, Cloud-Based and Merged approach.…”

“…The approach proposed by (El-Kassas et al, 2014) [S19] is a mixed solution between some different crossplatform development approaches. They combined the advantages from those mixed approaches and tried to reduce their drawbacks.…”

A Survey and Taxonomy of Core Concepts and Research Challenges in Cross-Platform Mobile Development

“…Examples of such approaches include Component-Based development (e.g. [32,74]) and Integrated Cross-Platform Mobile Development [28], the latter a proposed approach drawing from best practices inherited from other approaches. However, regardless of their novelty or possible application, we have yet to identify studies and experiments including these approaches, with the exception of those previously cited.…”