NativeScript 6.10 has several fixes, and a couple new features to make it worth your time to upgrade. 6.1 has to be one of my favorite recent releases.
Being biased here, the best fix is the PR I did; it allows the tns command line to actually be used with our awesome https://proplugins.org site. You could easily use NPM to work around the issue; but it is always better if the standard NativeScript cli tooling also works. So, I am ecstatic to see this show up in 6.1. So now completely removing my bias; the new ios wifi deployment support (which I haven't tested); is something I have really needed for a while, so awesome job team!
Core Modules
Their are a couple changes in Core modules that are worth noting. First of all; for those who have used my awesome nativescript-platform-css plugin for years; the NativeScript team finally decided I was right! 😀 They have not only stolen, er, borrowed, the idea to put device type in the class name (ns-android & ns-ios) , but they also borrowed the same idea I did in my nativescript-orientation plugin, which is put the orientation (ns-landscape & ns-portrait) into the class also. Unfortunately, I am a bit sad they still didn't have the foresight to borrow my poor-mans-media query system; it is still way better than nothing. Nor did they decide to use the device name css system, or any of the additional classes like .notch. So if you still need media query or actual device name support or anything else the platform-css; then you can continue to use the ns-platform-css plugin. And the ns-orientation plugin still offers the ability to force rotation and/or lock the rotation to a certain direction, so neither plugin will be discontinued because of the additional functionality both plugins still offer that the team didn't borrow.
In addition another community PR was accepted to add CSS calculation support! Unfortunately do to a minor oversight, it is broken in 6.10, but I would guess it should be fully fixed in 6.11.
CLI
This team has hit several home runs this release with me. In addition to getting my PR merged which solves the npm issues. They also added awesome iOS Wifi deployment support. And added iOS 13 and Xcode 11 support. Overall the CLI release looks to be a very awesome release.
Android
Android added several cool things in 6.1 also. First and foremost; Initial Kotlin compatibility has been added. This is very preliminary; so many things may not work.
Second they upgraded the the v8 Engine to 7.6 which adds the following features and enhancements
- New much faster JSON parser
- Promises.allsettled
In addition to the cool features added, they have also updated it to allow the latest Android tools and latest gradle. Also, they now added gradle.properties support so you can easily define properties next to your other gradle files...
IOS
Added metadata generation from inner members
Fixed issues with latest version of iOS and Xcode
Updating NativeScript
To get updated; you first need to do:
npm i -g nativescript@latest
To update a project; you need to do the following:
Latest Runtimes:
tns platform remove android && tns platform add android@latest
tns platform remove ios && tns platform add ios@latest
Latest Core modules:
npm r tns-core-modules --save
npm i tns-core-modules@latest --save
To install Webpack & HMR support:
npm i nativescript-dev-webpack@latest --save-dev
Note: you need to have nativescript-dev-webpack as a development dependency for HMR to work.
To install latest NativeScript Angular plugin
npm i nativescript-angular@latest --save
You will then need to install the actual angular bits; which as of this post v6 is currently supported.
The addition of all the additional analytics/tracking to the CLI reminded me; you can disable it permanently; if you value your privacy by doing:
tns usage-reporting disable && tns error-reporting disable