GitHub user erisu added a comment to the discussion: cordova-ios 8.0.0: Support minimum iOS 15
I believe the deployment target for **Cordova-iOS 8.0** should remain at **iOS 13.0**. As @dpogue suggested, we can consider increasing the minimum deployment target again in **Cordova-iOS 9.0**. The previous major release, **Cordova-iOS 7.x**, targeted **iOS 11.0**, and jumping directly to iOS 15.0 feels too aggressive. Such a change would drop support for four major iOS versions in one step, which is a significant gap. Incrementally increasing the minimum version is a more practical approach. IMO We also need to consider that some apps are distributed in-house to older devices that may be locked to a specific iOS version. While it's difficult to determine how many businesses use Cordova to build in-house apps or what OS versions those devices run, our goal should be to support as many reasonable scenarios as possible. **If our decision is based solely on API usage, then iOS 13.0 remains the most appropriate minimum target for this release.** Even though certain APIs under the WKWebView umbrella may require a higher target, we do not currently use those specific APIs. Basing our deployment target on the APIs that Cordova actually implements is the most logical and sustainable strategy. This perspective applies specifically to Cordova's iOS core framework. The application itself can set its own deployment target, independent of the framework. The framework's minimum simply defines the lowest iOS version the app can target. If a developer chooses to use third-party libraries—such as Google Firebase or Google Maps—that require a higher iOS version, it is their responsibility to increase their app's deployment target accordingly. Alternatively, they can remove those libraries if they need to support older devices. Regarding market share, I believe our general goal has been to support at least 98% of active devices. However, since Apple does not publicly share detailed distribution data, we make the best decision we can based on available information. We shouldn't bump our minimum deployment target just to align with a third-party library that isn't part of our core dependencies. Third-party libraries don't set their deployment target based on other unrelated libraries. They typically determine it based on the APIs they use directly or their own dependency tree. They might raise their minimum version for practical testing and tooling reasons, for example, if they no longer have access to testing devices or development environments compatible with older versions of Xcode. But that is based on choice... For instance, GitHub Actions only provides the last three macOS images, and not all Xcode versions can be installed on those runners. Even the oldest supported Xcode version doesn't include support for iOS 13.0 anymore (I recall). But this is where the concept of "soft support", as @breautek suggested, could come into play. One additional thing I wanted to point out is that some of Apple's own frameworks still set the deployment target as 11.0. GitHub link: https://github.com/apache/cordova/discussions/566#discussioncomment-14685123 ---- This is an automatically sent email for [email protected]. To unsubscribe, please send an email to: [email protected] --------------------------------------------------------------------- To unsubscribe, e-mail: [email protected] For additional commands, e-mail: [email protected]
