Adobe's PhoneGap added a CLI, a desktop app, the PhoneGap Developer preview app and PhoneGap Build, a cloud service that compiled an uploaded www folder and config.xml into signed Android and iOS apps, the easiest way to ship iOS without a Mac. On 11 August 2020 Adobe announced the end of PhoneGap and of its investment in Cordova 129 . PhoneGap Build shut down on 1 October 2020, deleting whatever users had not downloaded by 30 September, and three days after Adobe's post the Cordova project replied that Cordova was "still active and maintained." npm 2,036 tells the rest:
npm view phonegap version deprecated dependencies.cordovaversion = '9.0.0' deprecated = 'This package is deprecated, see https://blog.phonegap.com/update-for-...' dependencies.cordova = '^9.0.0'
The PhoneGap CLI stopped at 9.0.0 in October 2019 as a wrapper around Cordova CLI 9; its repository is archived. An inherited PhoneGap project is a Cordova project with some Build-only settings:
| PhoneGap-era item | Cordova today |
|---|---|
| phonegap build android | cordova build android (run, build and prepare) |
| <preference name="phonegap-version"> | Delete it; pin versions in package.json (package.json and Versions) |
| xmlns:gap and <gap:plugin> | cordova plugin add, recorded in package.json |
| Signing keys uploaded to Build | Your own keystore and build.json (Upload Keystore) |
| Cloud builds without a Mac | VoltBuilder or Monaca (Monaca and Onsen UI and Low-Code Tools) |
The real work is the platform upgrade: such an app targets an API level Google Play 1 stopped accepting years ago, so add android@15.1.0, fix the build errors with Android Build Failures, and replace dead plugins (Evaluating Plugins).