Windows Bridge for iOS Preview Is Open Sourced -- Visual Studio Magazine

Windows Bridge for iOS Preview Is Open Sourced

Project Islandwood is currently available in preview form to the open source development community under the MIT license.

By Michael Domingo
08/06/2015

Not much time has lapsed since Microsoft unveiled its developer-laden plans for Windows 10 ubuiqity at BUILD 2015 in San Francisco in May. And now that it has released Visual Studio 2015 and Windows 10 within the last few weeks, the work on some key bridge technologies looks to be coming along nicely.

Just this week, Microsoft made available a preview of the Windows Bridge for iOS, also known as "Project Islandwood," to the open source development community under the MIT license. Kevin Gallo with the Windows Developer Platform group blogged about the release, which is expected in full form after summer.

Windows Bridge for iOS is just one of several bridge technologies for porting apps developed for other app platform delivery systems without having to reengineer those apps. Microsoft also has previews of Windows Bridge for Web apps ("Westminster'") and Windows Bridge for Android ("Astoria"). And Microsoft is working on allowing developers to port legacy Windows apps for Windows Store delivery with another bridge, "Project Centennial," that's slated for delivery some time next year.

Windows Bridge for iOS supports porting apps to Windows 8.1 and Windows 10 apps for x86 and x64 processors, with ARM processor support in the works. Developers who want to work with the source can get it at GitHub.

Windows Bridge for iOS is comprised of an Objective-C compiler (which Salmaan Ahmed, Program Manager for Windows Bridge for iOS, notes is not being open sourced but still available on GitHub), Objective-C runtime, and iOS API headers and libraries. It also includes Visual Studio tooling for allowing Xcode projects to play nice with the rest of VS tools and Windows SDKs.

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