For more details and to download the Cloud SDK for iOS, visit http://developer.support.com/nexusconnectsdkios.html
- iOS App Development Environment
- All iOS developers use Mac for iOS app development.
- 99% of iOS app developers, probably all, test their apps first on simulator, which is a Mac application. And, then on iphone/ipads.
- Mac applications (i.e. simulator) mandates i386/x86_64 architecture.
- iPhones mandate ARM architecture.
- iOS SDKs must support both simulator & iphone
architecture to enable developers to debug app on simulator &
eventually deploy it for iPhones.
- iOS Apps
- ipa: An ipa is an iOS application archive file which stores an iPhone app. An ipa file is compressed with a binary for ARM architecture (which as stated above, runs only on iphones/iPad). You submit the ipa to Apple app-store for approval & availability. You can think of an ipa as being equivalent to an installer for iPhones.
-
App Footprint:
This is the uncompressed version of the ipa.
- Why is the SDK 150 MB in size?
- Since majority of iOS App developers use simulator, it is mandatory to have i386/x86_64 architecture support. We cannot drop it. SDK actually supports multiple architectures: armv7, arm64, i386, x86_64. So the size of the SDK goes up.
- 3rd Party Libraries.
- Why does our SDK only contribute 11 MB to the ipa (compressed archive file storing the iOS app) and 24 MB to the app (uncompressed ipa)?
- ipa is compressed version of the app and hence is smaller than the app.
- i386/x86_64 architecture is stripped out of ipa by xcode. Other optimizations by xcode also contribute in thinning the app.