Show HN: Xcode in your browser, idea only

4 points

14 years ago

I've had this idea brewing in my head for a few days, now. I think it might be possible to setup an in-browser iOS IDE and debug environment. The technology is out there, it's just a matter of patching it all together.

Here is a concept image I drew up in Paint just now: http://i.imgur.com/yEDT2.png

Here are my implementation thoughts:

+ Use http://codemirror.net/ for the actual in-browser editor

+ Use git for project file syncing, on the server, similar to Cloud9

+ HTTP-based API for fetching and updating files from a client browser

+ Compile on the server using Xcode command line tools, similar to how http://travis-ci.org/ operates

+ Actual iPhone emulator, using the technology, or similar technology, that powers https://browserling.com/ so you could get full click interaction

I know I entirely over simplified this. The only parts that I do not know if they'd work or not would be the actual compiling of the Objective-C code and the VNC-like emulator idea. I don't know if Substack has open sourced the core technology that powers browserling or not (I would assume probably not). Also, not sure if it would run on OSX either. There's probably ways to simplify this, too. Like, I have not poked around at the command line parameters to the iPhone emulator, etc, so I don't know if you can even invoke it from a command prompt, or if you have to go through Xcode.

This would require a lot of server power, but I think it'd be pretty sweet.

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