Thursday, November 1, 2018

Making Cesium API-Safe

Mike Clay:

Cesium now contains a sizeable chunk of features that have been built upon undocumented functionality and characteristics of the iOS media player API. Undocumented doesn’t mean restricted or forbidden, but it is subject to change without notice. Through the first half of Cesiums life these changes were very minimal. In some instances they could even be exploited to provide new features or improve performance. It was fine as long as it kept working, but it was built on sand. In iOS 11, and now 12, that sand shifted leaving a whole family of interrelated features teetering precariously. For the last 18 months a huge portion of my available development time has been taken up with tinkering like a mechanic trying to keep an old jalopy on the road.

[…]

For the last week or so I have been working on a new, API-safe branch of Cesium. A version of the app based (almost) exclusively on documented API features. Certainly in regards to the media player API. The idea is to do only what can be done well, reasonably “safely,” and future-proof. The casualties would look something like this[…]

It is surprising how little the music APIs support.

Previously: What’s Going on With Cesium.

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