Leveraging the PhoneGap Developer App as a PhoneGap Build user

The PhoneGap App is a great new addition to Adobe’s suite of PhoneGap tools.  It allows you to seamlessly push new code to a native device, resulting in much faster development, whether you are building PhoneGap locally or in the cloud.  What is not immediately obvious is how PhoneGap Build users can leverage it, if at all.  Well, fortunately, we can!

Unfortunately, you can’t just point the tool at your existing app directory like I’d hoped and run it. You’ll need to run the “phonegap create [my-app]” command first (where [my-app] is the name of the app and subsequent folder that is created).  This creates a bunch of template files and folders.  The key here is the “www” folder: this is where your existing Build code should go.

That’s really all there is to it, although it’s not all rainbows and sunshine.  As of May 2014, PhoneGap Build isn’t currently supported at all, which means no 3rd party plugins (supported Adobe ones work though!), remote debugging, or hydration (although that is basically provided and arguably the point of the PG App).  Support is planned, but for now you can move your code into the new “www” structure or perhaps set up a Grunt task to do so.