Introduction to a command-line interface

With the introduction of the CLI to PhoneGap, things have become a lot easier as, previously, you needed to install the full IDE environment for a specific platform and then install an extension for PhoneGap to be able to create a PhoneGap hybrid application. If you wanted to support multiple platforms at the same time, it usually involved copying the mobile application resources and assets among them.

Command line has changed all that. Now, you can create a new project with a single command and then run the application in your browser in order to test the functionality before wrapping and building it for a specific platform. With another command, you can run the application in the platform emulator on your computer or run it natively on the physical device. Everything can be accomplished with just a few commands and all the development is done in your favorite text editor without the need to open another IDE to build and run for that specific platform...