Ionic ios app development

Question

I am new to mobile development, working on my first app for both iOS and Android. I was under the impression that I can develop it through Ionic once (on my Linux system) and deploy it for both, but recently found out I need to develop on a Mac for iOS?

Like this guy said to someone equally unimpressed: https://stackoverflow.com/a/38117802/8494414 Also stated here: https://stackoverflow.com/a/40779188/8494414

My question is, at which stage do I need a Mac? Can I do all the development on my system and then just deploy with a Mac? Did I need to do something special from the get-go to support iOS? I am already rather deep in the process, but should I be considering a different framework?

I do find it strange that this knowledge doesn't seem very explicitly available.

Thank you for any help!

Answer 1

If you want to do a build for the iOS platform you will always need a macOS based operating system with xcode installed at some point. You can do all the coding on your linux machine as the hybrid part will be the same for all platforms. But if you want to test or deploy the iOS version of your app you will need either a mac or you will have to use some third party service where you can upload your sourcecode and you get a ready for install .ipa back. Ionic itself offers a service like that: see Ionic Package Service

Answer 2

As joshmorony said on his blog:

In order to compile an iOS application using Cordova, you need the iOS SDK, which is only possible if you have a Mac and XCode. This is not an issue for Android because the Android SDK can be installed on both Windows and Mac. If you are not using a Mac, you simply can not create iOS builds.

you can also use some virtual machines but they can be illegal and I don't recommend them