"Open Source Interview" Crossapp author Li Yuan interview record

About Open Source Interviews

Open Source interview is open source China launched a series of domestic outstanding open source software authors of interviews, written in a way to record and spread. We hope open-source interview can fully show the domestic open source software, open source software Author's current situation, really promote the application and development of domestic open source software.

"Author profile" @ Li Yuan, open source enthusiasts. From iOS app development, Cocos2d-iphone game development to Cocos2d-x game development, participated in the development of the first "national hero" of the AppStore leaderboard, and many other successful projects on the line. Currently working for Http://9miao.com, focusing on the development of open source cross-platform mobile application engine Crossapp.

"Introduction to Software"

Crossapp is a free, open source, cross-platform mobile application development engine that uses C + + development, based on OpenGL ES 2.0 rendering, to help all developers quickly develop cross-platform native mobile apps that support export including iOS and Android.

"Interview Record"

1. What motivates you to develop the Crossapp cross-platform mobile application development engine?

Once our boss (@ Big Egg) needs to do a 9-second mobile version of the community, and, in order to facilitate version maintenance, want to use a cross-platform solution, looking for a variety of solutions on the Web, only to find that there is no particularly suitable for the development of cross-platform native mobile application solutions (either based on HTML5, or charge), So decided to use Cocos2d-x to do, in the process, found that Cocos2d-x is able to meet the development of mobile games, but can not meet the development of mobile applications, a lot of ideas and features can not match, in the encapsulation of a lot of features with the application feature, eventually abandoned the cocos2d-x, and decided to extract Cocos2d-x's cross-platform section and then re-develop an open-source engine specifically for mobile applications, and started the Crossapp open-source cross-platform engine.

What are the advantages and characteristics of the 2.CROSSAPP engine?

Crossapp supports major development platforms, including Mac, iOS, Android, Win32, WP8, and is based on the Crossapp cross-platform features, so it's relatively traditional for IOS and Android native apps, Crossapp can save development cycles and costs, and app development can be easily implemented on different platforms with simple porting.
Crossapp encapsulates a large number of UI controls, and each one is rich in functionality, developers can directly use feature-rich controls to develop applications that basically meet most of the functionality of the application development needs, while also eliminating the amount of time it takes to encapsulate UI controls. To further improve the efficiency of development, the official will update the new controls twice a week.
Crossapp integrates some third-party libraries, such as common data parsing libraries jsoncpp, TinyXML, HTTP, etc., while Crossapp also through the third-party library SpiderMonkey conversion, so that it can directly use the JS script to write programs, Third-party developers can also provide more third-party libraries to the majority of users.

What is the future direction of 3.CROSSAPP engine development?

A) continuous optimization of rendering efficiency and the structure of the entire engine
b) Continuously enrich UI controls and add a variety of third-party libraries to reduce engine usage complexity
c) constantly optimize the user experience of the UI to ensure that projects made with Crossapp have a superior user experience
D) in the future will support the conversion of various scripting languages, so that they can directly use JS, Lua and other languages to develop projects

4. How many people are currently involved in the development/maintenance of Crossapp? 、

With 6 people in full-time development and more than 10 external developers writing new things for our engines, we expect more open source developers to join the 9-second Executive Contribution Committee (the 9 tribute Commission).

5.CROSSAPP has been developing for so long, have external personnel submitted code or contributed to Crossapp?

Yes, Crossapp on the third day. External developers have submitted code for us, and some of the UI controls have been submitted by external personnel and added to the engine after approval, such as Caswitch, Caslider, and so on.

Will 6.CrossApp pay?

No, our engine will always be fully open source free.

7.CROSSAPP now how to promote?
Currently mainly rely on the open source community to promote, including Oschina.net, 9miao.com, and so on, and now we have partnered with Oschina Crossapp Control reward development activities, the latter will add more new activities.

8. Can you talk about your understanding of open source, and how you think about open source technology and products in China?
9 seconds The community has always been a staunch performer of open source projects, open source software is easy to obtain user recognition, but also can quickly get user feedback, these are not available in commercial software. Domestic open source After so many years of accumulation also has some more mature and influential open-source projects. Hopefully more people will be able to participate in the open source project and experience some of the pleasures that are not experienced at work.