suggestion: add catalyst support

[Catta1997]

No description provided.

[SuperMarcus]

Tbh I'm eager to see NineAnimator working on macOS as well. The only problem is with the dependency manager that NineAnimator is using. In order for Catalyst to work all the dependencies have to be packed with the new XCFramework format, which Carthage doesn't support generating yet (see Carthage/Carthage#2799).

As soon as XCFramework generation support for Carthage drops I'll work on the Catalyst support for NineAnimator.

[FaizanDurrani]

I built a Catalyst version of the app here https://github.com/FaizanDurrani/NineAnimator/releases/tag/1.2.6-Mac

It uses Swift Package Manager to resolve the dependencies. So, completely removed Carthage.

[Catta1997]

@SuperMarcus any update?

[SuperMarcus]

I haven't got many chances to work on this. Replacing Carthage with SPM is certainly something worth considering, especially since the mainstream Carthage likely won't get xcframework support anytime soon.

I've already created a spm branch in the repository for experimentations. I am probably not going to merge #75, but it's a good reference for how things can be done.

[SuperMarcus]

So I spent a little time on Swift PM this weekend (check out the spm branch) and got Catalyst working. Here's a notorized build (v1.2.6-11) if you're interested in trying it out. Of course, the UI still looks very much like an iOS app, and we'll need to do a little redesign on this.

• 🎁 NineAnimator_macCatalyst_1.2.6_Build_11.zip

[Catta1997]

Great thanks! I'm also testing on iOS 14 and works perfectly

[Catta1997]

@SuperMarcus with macOS Big Sur (Beta) and the new Xcode according with Apple's site:

Native Mac apps built with Mac Catalyst can share code with your iPad apps, and you can add more features just for Mac. In macOS Big Sur, you can create even more powerful versions of your apps and take advantage of every pixel on the screen by running them at native Mac resolution. Apps built with Mac Catalyst can now be fully controlled using just the keyboard, access more iOS frameworks, and take advantage of the all-new look of macOS Big Sur. There’s never been a better time to turn your iPad app into a powerful Mac app.

[SuperMarcus]

I've merged the spm branch into master. We'll continue to work on macCatalyst related tasks in the master branch.

Closing this issue.