Windows Bridge - Objective-C iOS app Development in Microsoft Windows

The most popular question you get asked as an iOS developer is - "Is it possible to make iOS app in Windows ?" :[

But the sad and short answer was always NO !
Now if the question is "Is is possible to develop in Windows using Objective-C ?", the answer will be "Yes !" :]

There are other options like using virtual machine or running www.hackintosh.com

But Now there is a better way around, No ! I'm now talking about open source Swift coming to Linux later this year.

But today Microsoft has open sourced WinObjC.

NOTE :  That this is to help and expand develop app on Windows Platform not to develop iOS app ! 

Rather it is developed as helper to convert existing iOS app to Windows Platform.

Email Newsletter -

Windows Bridge for iOS: Initial preview now on GitHub!

We have great news to share about Windows Bridge for iOS ('Project Islandwood').

We just made a few big announcements about the bridge, and we wanted to be sure you were among the first to find out. First, we announced availability of an initial preview release of the technology to target Windows PCs running Windows 8.1 and Windows 10. Secondly, we announced that we are targeting fall for a full release, in conjunction with the update to Visual Studio 2015.

But the biggest announcement is that we are releasing the bridge as an open source project under the MIT license, and making it available on GitHub. We invite you to check out the project on GitHub and follow our progress as we work towards our fall release. The team is very excited to share the iOS bridge with you, and we hope you'll follow along with us.

For additional information, check out the detailed Windows Bridge for iOS blog post and be sure to check us out at GitHub.

Thank you, The Windows Bridge for iOS Team

And the GitHub description -

Welcome to the Windows Bridge for iOS project preview

What is WinObjC?

Windows Bridge for iOS (also referred to as WinObjC) is a Microsoft open source project that provides an Objective-C development environment for Visual Studio/Windows. In addition, WinObjC provides support for iOS API compatibility.

The following sections will help you get started and you can view our wiki for more detailed information.

Where to get it

Download the Windows Bridge for iOS SDK here

Getting started with WinObjC

To use WinObjC, there are a few requirements. You need:

• Windows 10
• Visual Studio 2015 with Windows developer tools. Visual Studio 2015 Community is available for free here. Select (at least) the following components during installation:
  1. Programming Languages -> Visual C++
  2. Universal Windows App Development Tools (all)
  3. Windows 8.1 and Windows Phone 8.0/8.1 Tools (all)

The best way to get started with WinObjC is to run one of the samples. We recommend starting with the WOCCatalog sample app, which demonstrates an assortment of iOS and XAML UI controls. To run the sample:

1. Extract the SDK zip file to a local directory
2. Navigate to winobjc/samples/WOCCatalog in the extracted directory
3. Double-click on WOCCatalog-WinStore10.sln to open in VS2015
4. In VS2015 right-click on the WOCCatalog (Universal Windows) project
5. Select Set as StartUp project
6. Use Ctrl-F5 to build and run the app

For guidance about importing your own Xcode project and other Windows Bridge for iOS SDK details, see the wiki

Contributions

There are many ways that you can contribute to the WinObjC project:

• Submit a bug
• Verify fixes for bugs
• Submit a code fix for a bug
• Submit a feature request
• Submit a unit test
• Tell others about the WinObjC project
• Tell the developers how much you appreciate the project

Pull requests

You will need to sign a Contribution License Agreement (CLA) before submitting your pull request. To complete the CLA, you will need to submit the request via the form and then electronically sign the CLA when you receive an email containing a link to the document.

This process needs to only be done once for any Microsoft open source project.

Contributing to README and Wiki

You do not need to sign a Contribution License Agreement if you are just contributing to the README or the Wiki. However, by submitting a contribution to the README or the Wiki, you are contributing it under the Creative Commons CC0 1.0 Universal Public Domain Dedication.

What's still under development?

As this project is still under active development, there are a few features that are not yet built out:

1. x86 only today ARM support coming soon
2. Compiler optimizations will not work and will likely crash clang, debug builds only
3. Autolayout
4. Storyboard support
5. MapKit
6. AssetsLibrary
7. AddressBook
8. Ads
9. Objective-C annotations
10. Media Capture and Playback

Problems?

If you have any questions, we're listening and will do our best to help. Just go tohttp://stackoverflow.com/ and tag your questions with WinObjC. You can also get more information at our wiki

Directory structure

• bin/ : Various prebuilt tools
• build/ : Projects/solutions to build the SDK
• deps/ : Open source dependencies
  • prebuilt/ : Prebuilt binaries for various architectures
• Frameworks/ : Implementation of iOS-style Frameworks
• include/ : SDK headers (including headers for iOS-style Frameworks)
  • Platform/ : Headers for Windows Objective-C bindings for various OS versions
• msvc/ : Visual Studio integration files
• samples/ : Assorted samples
• tools/ : Source code to tools