What about running and building on a Mac? THATâS what Mac developers are after ⊠
Itâs nice to say âwe are user orientedâ, but for a cross-platform tool to not have a cross-platform IDE is a major omission that should be corrected as a matter of urgency. Heck, even Electron has it 
And if you REALLY want to show off, write it in B4 ⊠
Yeah, we all saw what that did with Xojo 
It is just because he used the RIGHT tool to write the IDE, it is so fast for us to make our own programs. How many of us are ever going to write an IDE and compiler? It would proof nothing.
Talked with Erel today about porting the IDE to Mac, and it just isnât possible without a complete rewrite. It would take years to get back to the point where the IDE is right now so, no thank you. Please continue making it even better instead of going back years for us Windows programmers. And with the iOS cloud compilation he offers, itâs the only windows tool that can make iOS native apps without having to buy a Mac.
He said never say never, but not in the near future. Sure Erel will be able to explain it betterâŠ
As Alain wrote, building a cross platform IDE will require a complete rewrite and it is likely that the new IDE will be less powerful and fast than the current one.
The B4X IDE is quite good. It is fast and with many modern features. It is a challenging task to create such IDE. It is also based on a Windows only third party library.
An editor wouldnât be a big issue. (Dave S has been building one for Swift.)
After all , the editor is working on text files.
The B4X layout editor also doesnt do a lot with visualisation
The other things the IDE for B4x does are pretty great, though.
The tips and help and code checking âas you typeâ are particularly welcome.
(mind you, breakpoints are a problem when debugging.
I cannot get the app to âcontinueâ once a breakpoint is reached when debugging Android⊠it will step but not run)
A full IDE experience needs debugging and compilation, which I assume is the actual hard part for porting.
Until I complete my B4A project, and then port that to B4i , I wonât be dabbling in porting it to Mac, (and even that will probably be âjust for funâ as my B4A project is kind of a âLiteâ edition of my existing Xojo Mac app.)
For the last 5 years, I donât think I ever programmed on my ânativeâ machine, always in a VM. So I got a clean Windows 10 running VMware Workstation, with an extra Windows 10 license for my virtual machine with all my programming stuff installed on a portable SSD. May sound weird, but I can take snap shots whenever I want, move my environment around from home to the office and back, try something out without affecting the main one, etcâŠ
I mainly use B4X and Eclipse and I never have felt one of them to be slower in the VM than directly on a machine. My physical machines at home and at the office do have 64GB of RAM. The one at home runs multiple terminal sessions to my thin clients (Raspberry Piâs running WtWare) and I donât see any notable difference. And that way, my PCâs CPU has some work to do, instead of running semi idle at 5%
When on the road, I often use AnyDesk on my Chromebook to just take over the screen of my VM so I can still do some programming. B4Xâs IDE is pretty light compared to Xojoâs. Less âeye candyâ, but a lot more productive.
you are probably doing something wrong. The debugger, you can run after a breakpoint, and even Hotswap code and continue with debugging
LOL.
Iâm pretty sure not.
Add a breakpoint.
Run the app.
Execution stops at my breakpoint.
I look at (but dont change) the values of some variables, then I click the > arrow to continue.
And it doesnât.
Hard to see what I could be doing wrong in that process.
If âhotswap codeâ is your description of the âUse CTRL-sâ facility to change code and continue, that doesnât work either. The app just quits.
But knowing this, I just work around it.
This is indeed very strange. Have you reported this to Erel? I set breakpoints and do hot code swapping all the time and have never seen this. And I donât seem to find anyone else having that problem on the forum (the last âsimilarâ behavior I found was from 2015).
I havenât. Itâs not a showstopper for me.
Iâve been logging other questions recently and am getting the impression that asking how to do what should be basic stuff (like browse for a file) is irritating people.
(It seems that Android doesnât believe in files.)
So Iâm trying to keep the issue count down for a while. 
Erel is a very busy person and I donât want to bother him.
Hello Community,
as described in the Swift thread I am also evaluating B4X as my next development environment.
I have started to learn with B4J on my Windows system and checked the B4X forum for Android and iOS for several questions I have.
I have seen B4X 2 years ago the first time. I was very impressed what Erel has made. Not only developing this tool but also answering all the questions in the forum with high quality.
I am convinced of the quality of this tool but uncertain about its future. I saw that an Investor has entered the B4X scene so that B4A can become Open Source. Will all components of B4X go Open Source so the community can develop and maintain it (e.g. via a foundation like other projects)? What happens if Erel stops working in B4X? This uncertainty is actually my biggest showstopper for B4X.
Best regards
âChristian
This has been answered by Erel on his forum, and it is quite the contrary: there is more stability and certainty for the future than ever. His commitment is legendary!
The core libraries are. This allows you to make (temporary?) changes in case of showstoppers that Erel will fix eventually but that one needs right now. Also a great opportunity to look and learn from Erelâs mind. The IDE will not go open source (but honestly, I wouldnât like anyone in the community be messing with that part anyway).
I remember having found a bad bug some time ago in one of the core libs that halted the development in our company completely. After reporting it to Erel, literally 10 minutes later we received an update of it! It was a fix I may have been able to do myself if I had the source code back then. So having them at our disposal now is huge and an absolute boost to believe in this tool. And Erel is not that old that he is thinking of stopping. 
Xojo may have a much bigger problem in that area. Expansion is what he has in mind and he has taken all possible precautions in case of (God forbid). It may appear Erel is doing it all on his own, but he is not. He is however the heart and soul.
I hope this reassured you somewhat, but if in doubt, email Erel. Iâm sure he will be able to take away any further doubts you may have.
@Alwaysbusy
Thank you for your feedback. I guess I will take a deeper look into B4X 
Best regards
âChristian