Usability on iOS, dev with phone alone

New user who hasn’t found detailed manuals yet … My apologies in advance for any breach of decorum.

My phone is my computer. Is it feasible to develop bots and webxdc apps on my Android?

Sadly, some of my friends use íphones . :slight_smile: Is it possible for them to use Delta chat?

It depends on what you mean by feasible. Since you’re saying your phone is your computer then maybe it’s feasible for you. It all boils down to what tools and software you’re using on your phone. Do you have a more specific question?

There’s an app for iPhone so this isn’t a problem.

It is possible to develop Python bots on Android with the help of Termux which is available from F-Droid. Compiling Delta Chat core on the phone is not feasible, but official Python bindings come with precompiled library. You can then run the bot on your phone or on a spare Android phone that stays at home and is always connected. Once you have installed Termux you can refer the quickstart guide.

webxdc development is also possible on the phone and is probably even easier than developing bots. I heard that Acode editor is good for web development on Android.

For iOS there is a Delta Chat client, you can find the link to it on https://get.delta.chat/. iOS is not a good platform for development, but your friends will be able to contact your bots and use xdcs you create on their phones.

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Thanks Ralph!

Feasible (definition) … A task could be considered feasible if an old fart boomer, 5-yrs-retired, wannabe analyst, wannabe programmer, with a mid-grade older moto phone could fairly easily find the stable tools he needs on a trustworthy public server, along with documentation and a large amount of patient congenial help.

See the post by @link2xt above. I’d start by trying to set up things gradually. Maybe just see what kind of editor that works well for you. Maybe get an external keyboard?

Termux is a brilliant tool. It’s package manager pkg has support for most things.

Lnk2xt Thanks. I tried Acode awhile back then switched to ms code due to prior experience. I’ll give Acode another go.

I thought that all you had to do was write a short script and embed it in a zip, with no compilation necessary(?).

Is it different for apps and bots? For now, my primary interest is in small web apps.

Thanks to both lnk2ex and Ralph … I’ll be picking up termux.

ms code works on android phones?

you need to write your html/js/css then put it into a zip file, you can also add a manifest.toml to set the name and other properties (Redirecting...) also an icon for your app would be nice.

Some people use npm packages and bundlers to use javascript libraries and frameworks like react/vue/svelte that require a compiler because you don’t use standard js/html to write them. Also with bundlers you can add code minification, javascript/typescript linting and type checking, tests for you business logic functions and more. But using npm or whatever is optional.

For bots you need to talk with our detachat core library (upon which all of our clients are built), since your phone likely does not have enough power and ram to compile core, you need to use a prebuilt version that was prebuilt for your phone’s cpu architecture. Using the python bindings is the easiest way to do that, also python is a fairly easy language and we already have a framework for making deltachat bots in python even easier: simplebot.

We also have bindings for other languages, but I don’t know how hard it is to get them to run on a phone, see GitHub - deltachat-bot/echo: An echo bot in multiple languages to get you started for examples.

Sorry, Simon, it’s been a few years since I last used it, and I should have checked my facts … not ms code, but vs code for the web will run in many browsers ( https://vscode.dev/ ).

Thanks for all the other great leads.

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