Corona SDK and OSX 10.10 (Yosemite) status

12 June 2014

Corona SDK and OSX 10.10 (Yosemite) status


Corona SDK

Everyone is excited after the recent WWDC where OSX 10.10 (Yosemite), Xcode 6.0 and iOS8 were announced and Apple gave developers early access to beta releases of the three products.  Naturally we’ve had some customers jump on the new systems.  We wanted to take a minute and discuss where we are with these various tools.

Use Apple Betas/Previews with Caution

Early Apple betas/previews tend to be bleeding edge, and there’s a reason they call it “bleeding edge”. When you are on the bleeding edge, you have to ask how much you want to bleed?

If you depend on your iPhone or iPad to work and to be able to deploy apps or if you expect your Mac to be able to build and deploy apps, you probably should not upgrade to these preview systems. As a rule, Apple will not take submissions from beta software and we don’t want you to hurt your ability to be productive. If you can spare a Mac and a device and want to help blaze the iOS 8/Yosemite trail with us, by all means, the more eyes on it the better, but if it’s your main machines or devices, you probably should wait.

iOS8

Early reports from people seem to indicate that Corona SDK-built apps are running on the current beta. Of course, we have not provided access to the iOS 8 SDK, so you can’t try building for iOS 8 yet. 

Xcode 6

You should be able to run the Xcode 6 preview along side your existing Xcode 5.1.1 installs, but Xcode 6 is a beta, so don’t use it to deploy to the app store. So if you have both versions installed and need to deploy to the app store, be sure 5.1.1 is selected using xcode-select.

OS X 10.10 (Yosemite)

OS X 10.10 (Yosemite) is very much an early beta, so if you depend on your Mac to build Corona SDK apps, don’t upgrade to Yosemite just yet.

As it pertains to Corona, there are OpenGL/layer bugs that prevent Corona SDK from rendering content correctly. These same bugs prevent Apple’s own sample (LayerBackedOpenGLView) from working correctly as well.

If you’d like to help us get Apple to prioritize this issue, you can file the following bug report to Apple and submit it at: https://bugreport.apple.com.

We’ve already filed this bug (rdar://17202371), but the more people who complain, the more likely Apple will fix this sooner than later.

What about Swift and other new features?

Swift is likely going to be an Apple-only language and will not support cross-platform development, so we do not believe there is any conflict with Corona. Having said that, it’s great that Apple has made iOS development more accessible and their development process easier. We are obviously big believers in this and this will benefit the entire ecosystem. Swift may also benefit Corona developers by making it easier for them to developer their own iOS plugins with Corona Enterprise.

As for the other iOS8 goodies, it’s too early for us to comment on what features we can make available to Corona developers. We are equally excited about what we’ve seen but, like you, we just learned about many of them so we need to do more testing.

Rob Miracle
[email protected]

Rob is the Developer Relations Manager for Corona Labs. Besides being passionate about helping other developers make great games using Corona, he is also enjoys making games in his spare time. Rob has been coding games since 1979 from personal computers to mainframes. He has over 16 years professional experience in the gaming industry.

10 Comments
  • WideAwakeGames
    Posted at 11:41h, 12 June

    I’d be more interesting in the impact that Metal may have on you guys than Swift.

    • Rob Miracle
      Posted at 15:21h, 12 June

      I’m sure engineering is looking into it. On the plus side, a 10x improvement in the graphics pipeline is a good thing. However, one of the things that helps us be cross-platform is using OpenGL. It would be very difficult to try and support multiple graphics engines.

      • Benjamin Intal
        Posted at 16:58h, 12 June

        Hopefully Apple makes it easy enough to switch between OpenGL and Metal so that Corona can easily get its benefits in iOS devices. Having the ability to add more sprites and effects without affecting performance is huge. I’ve heard that it was easy for Unity 3D to switch to Metal, fingers crossed that this can also be the case with Corona.

  • Joe
    Posted at 16:04h, 12 June

    Cross-platform is not that important if you can’t deliver a market-proof concept/app.

    Swift is my solution now.

  • Benjamin Intal
    Posted at 17:04h, 12 June

    Please also try and find a workaround to the Yosemite bug. Other apps (such as Better Touch Tool) that crash on Yosemite have been releasing fixes that make them work again. Since we are not sure that Apple will address this bug in a beta update or even in the release version, Corona Labs should be looking into a fix asap.

  • Andrew Davis
    Posted at 20:52h, 14 October

    I am running OSX 10.10 and it is now running. Apple responded to my bug report saying that Engineering has fixed the issue. I just ran a Corona project and all seems fine so far.

  • Jerry Harris
    Posted at 16:30h, 10 February

    I upgraded to Yosemite and I get “A fatal error has occurred” when I launch Corona now. Is this the experience of everyone? Where could I get info to try and debug my installation? I have completely uninstalled and installed Corona again. Any help would be appreciated. Thanks.

    • Rob Miracle
      Posted at 16:45h, 10 February

      What version of Corona SDK are you trying to install?

    • Chris
      Posted at 21:02h, 31 August

      I am having a same problem and now just going to downgrade the Yosemite…

      • Rob Miracle
        Posted at 21:05h, 31 August

        What problem are you having? Most people are running Yosemite just fine.