Sometimes it seems like a conspiracy. We have everything running smoothly to deploy your app to the iOS app store, and then Apple release an update and change everything behind the scenes. Suddenly your app no longer works with the latest and greatest from Apple. Do they do this on purpose? Well, probably not. Progress is good. Better features just mean we have to work harder to keep up.
All of which is a preliminary to saying, we now have 6.6.4 RC1 available for you to download, with iOS 8 support. We're hoping to release the final GM on Monday so please do download, test and report any bugs you find in the Quality Center.
What's in 6.6.4?
Support for iOS 8 device and simulator builds has been added to 6.6.4-rc-1 for OS 10.9 users. This means that if you are using OS 10.9 you must now have Xcode 6 installed in order to perform device builds. The requirements for all previous OS X versions will remain the same. You will find a handy table setting out the requirements on various versions of OS X here. Bugs relating to orientation, push notifications and screen sizes on iOS 8 have been resolved in addition to standalone builder updates allowing for the specification of new iPhone 6 splash screens.
A handful of other fixes and minor changes have made their way into 6.6.4. An interesting one is that Script Limits have now been officially removed, both from Community and Commercial editions of LiveCode. Script limits used to prevent you from having more than 10 lines of code available to end users of your application. The point of this was to prevent you from creating an application which was effectively a programming environment in itself, thus bypassing the need for your end users to have a LiveCode license. In an open source world, this no longer makes sense, so we have removed it. This gives Commercial license holders more flexibility in the way you build your apps. Our EULA does still prohibit you from creating competitors to LiveCode itself - you can read the full terms here.
We are already working on some bug reports from the RC1 release. Eric Corbett has reported a Simulator issue with Copy Files not being picked up. Our own Mark Waddingham has identified that the incorrect simulator version is being picked up, and Mike Kerner has found an issue with screen sizes on iPhone 5s. Michael McCreary, one of our most experienced developers, is tasked together with Panos Merakos to fix these and any other issues that may crop up. He is optimistic that these can be fixed in time for a Monday GM release. We really appreciate getting these reports, so if you have time to test 6.6.4 RC1 today or over the weekend, please do.
What about Yosemite?
Increasing numbers of you have been asking me this question recently. Yosemite is not yet an official Apple release, so we do not yet officially support it, however work is already in hand to make sure we will fully support it as soon as possible after it is released. We have already added several fixes to 6.7 RC2 and 7.0 RC2 to ensure compatibility. In regards to 6.6.4, we are considering back porting the fixes for Yosemite support, depending on whether or not it is officially released before LiveCode 6.7/7.0 go to Gold Master. In the meantime, if you are developing on a pre-release version of Yosemite, you need to use either 6.7 RC2 or 7.0 RC2 in order to deploy to iOS.
