ProgressNS
Documentation is confusing. Can't dev iOS from Windows
I have unclear instruction on how to develop for iOS from Windows, as Sidekick documentation refers to outdated links and gives very little valuable information regarding iOS development for people new at it like me.
Hello @JorgeHawkins ,
Thank you for your feedback. I agree that the documentation is critical for user's success.
The good news is we are releasing a redesigned Sidekick and its documentation by May 24. I urge you to give it a try and see if it improved your satisfaction with us.
In the mean time, our team would be very grateful if you share with us the key points which you found unclear. This will allow us to concentrate and fix them first.
Looking forward to hear from you soon, Todor
OK. Reading through the documentation more thoroughly, I found the following issues.
- The documentation often redirects to old or non-reachable links, which makes working with NS that more complicated.
- NativeScript Sidekick's major selling point is the ability to develop for iOS without the hassle of buying and preparing a Mac (which for me, was enough reason alone to get a Business package for our team, as Macs are even more expensive in my country), however, after reading the documentation, I found that you actually have to have a Mac to do it. At least that's what I got of it. I'm not sure if I'm getting things wrong, but the documentation seems confusing in this topic. Such examples of confusing parts of documentation includes the following, in the Code Signing Assistance section:
"Verify that you have connected at least one iOS device to your machine."
It does not specify if the machine has to be any PC running NativeScript Sidekick or a Mac (which I think is the latter of the two).
I'm really interested to get NS for my business, but I found the documentation quite disorganized and a bit confusing. At least for me and all the team members that have been working on Nativescript for Android since quite a long time ago.
Hello @JorgeHawkins,
Thank you for giving us examples of what you find confusing in the NativeScript Sidekick documentation and what you believe can be improved.
Regarding the old and non-reachable links, we are constantly scanning the documentation for broken links and we have not identified any in our last inspection. On the other hand, links with old or outdated content are a lot harder to identify. With this in mind, we will be grateful if you can specify the problematic links as this will help us to fix them sooner.
About the second issue, you are correct and NativeScript Sidekick gives you the ability to build and publish iOS applications in the cloud on Windows, Linux and macOS systems. However, you can also use Sidekick to build apps locally, in which case you need to use a macOS system to develop iOS applications.
The Code Signing Assistance will work on both Windows and macOS systems (on Linux, iOS devices cannot be detected, which proves your point that the sentence "Verify that..." can be more specific). We have structured our documentation so that "machine" means Windows, macOS and Linux, and we specify the concrete system only in places where some limitations or restrictions exist. Nevertheless, now that you have brought this to our attention, we will work on modifying such sentences to be more specific.
Thank you for helping us improve the documentation by sharing your thoughts and concerns. We would welcome any additional feedback that you might have about the documentation or the product.
@JorgeHawkins what did you end up doing? I'm in a situation where I don't want to learn react/expo/react native etc. because my code base and expertise is in Angular. And i've been a Windows user (and price sensitive guy) my entire life and would rather not pay up the money (and time to migrate my stuff, sell my current laptop) for a Mac. However, I need to ship production grade mobile apps that people will pay for, so not sure what to do.
