Codename One VS robovm

Compare Codename One vs robovm and see what are their differences.

Codename One

Cross-platform framework for building truly native mobile apps with Java or Kotlin. Write Once Run Anywhere support for iOS, Android, Desktop & Web. (by codenameone)

robovm

Ahead of time compiler for JVM bytecode targetting iOS, Mac OSX and Linux (by MobiVM)
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Codename One robovm
88 7
1,646 917
1.6% 1.1%
8.5 7.8
7 days ago 10 days ago
Java Java
GNU General Public License v3.0 or later -
The number of mentions indicates the total number of mentions that we've tracked plus the number of user suggested alternatives.
Stars - the number of stars that a project has on GitHub. Growth - month over month growth in stars.
Activity is a relative number indicating how actively a project is being developed. Recent commits have higher weight than older ones.
For example, an activity of 9.0 indicates that a project is amongst the top 10% of the most actively developed projects that we are tracking.

Codename One

Posts with mentions or reviews of Codename One. We have used some of these posts to build our list of alternatives and similar projects. The last one was on 2024-02-05.
  • A list of SaaS, PaaS and IaaS offerings that have free tiers of interest to devops and infradev
    47 projects | dev.to | 5 Feb 2024
    codenameone.com — Open source, cross-platform, mobile app development toolchain for Java/Kotlin developers. Free for commercial use with an unlimited number of projects
  • Android Play Billing Needs updating
    2 projects | /r/cn1 | 29 Aug 2023
    This was resolved in this issue: https://github.com/codenameone/CodenameOne/issues/3706
  • Backward Compatibility, Go 1.21, and Go 2
    6 projects | news.ycombinator.com | 14 Aug 2023
    Naturally depends on the use case, yet they work good enough to be in business for 20 years.

    https://www.ptc.com/en/products/developer-tools/perc

    https://www.aicas.com/wp/products-services/jamaicavm-tools/

    https://www.codenameone.com/

    Android 5 & 6 (only changed back into JIT/AOT due to long compile times), https://www.infoq.com/news/2014/07/art-runtime/

    Unfortunely the best well known, Excelsior JET, is no longer in business, most likely due to GraalVM and OpenJ9 being available as free beer, while PTC, Aicas Codename One are safe in their domains.

    There is also RoboVM (https://github.com/MobiVM/robovm) as free beer, however it actually started as a commercial product, and the acquisition from Xamarin kind of stagnated it (naturally).

  • Can't Reproduce a Bug?
    1 project | dev.to | 1 Aug 2023
    At Codename One, we were using App Engine when our daily billing suddenly skyrocketed from a few dollars to hundreds. The potential cost was so high it threatened to bankrupt us within a month. Despite our best efforts, including educated guesses and fixing everything we could, we were never able to pinpoint the specific bug. Instead, we had to solve the problem through brute force.
  • Mobile Apps with Java
    1 project | /r/java | 10 Jul 2023
    We don't use GraalVM since our project was developed prior to its existence and we aimed for deeper native integration than it can offer: https://github.com/codenameone/CodenameOne
  • Developing cross platform mobile application [closed]
    2 projects | /r/codehunter | 10 Jun 2023
    XMLVM, Codename One and iSpectrum (cross compile Java code from an Android app or creating one from scratch
  • Apple Offer Codes
    1 project | /r/cn1 | 6 Jun 2023
    I suggest filing an RFE in the issue tracker.
  • Play Billing Library Version Deprecation
    1 project | /r/cn1 | 5 Jun 2023
    Thanks. It's always good to get another reminder. Yes, it was reported. u/shannah78 is working on this but we have time until November.
  • Problems compilint to android side
    1 project | /r/cn1 | 10 Mar 2023
    please check this issue https://github.com/codenameone/CodenameOne/issues/3686
  • The Holy Grail of Java Performance
    1 project | /r/java | 2 Mar 2023
    We use ParparVM which we wrote. It compiles a subset of Java 8 (sort of) to native by translating the bytecode to C and passing that through XCode. The reason we took this path and not the path of "direct to native", is that it allows for future compatibility.

robovm

Posts with mentions or reviews of robovm. We have used some of these posts to build our list of alternatives and similar projects. The last one was on 2023-08-14.
  • MobiVM, ahead-of-time compiler for Java bytecode, targeting iOS, macOS and Linux
    1 project | news.ycombinator.com | 22 Mar 2024
  • Backward Compatibility, Go 1.21, and Go 2
    6 projects | news.ycombinator.com | 14 Aug 2023
    Naturally depends on the use case, yet they work good enough to be in business for 20 years.

    https://www.ptc.com/en/products/developer-tools/perc

    https://www.aicas.com/wp/products-services/jamaicavm-tools/

    https://www.codenameone.com/

    Android 5 & 6 (only changed back into JIT/AOT due to long compile times), https://www.infoq.com/news/2014/07/art-runtime/

    Unfortunely the best well known, Excelsior JET, is no longer in business, most likely due to GraalVM and OpenJ9 being available as free beer, while PTC, Aicas Codename One are safe in their domains.

    There is also RoboVM (https://github.com/MobiVM/robovm) as free beer, however it actually started as a commercial product, and the acquisition from Xamarin kind of stagnated it (naturally).

  • Options for targeting ios with Java
    4 projects | /r/java | 4 Dec 2022
    I think libGDX still uses RoboVM, but I’m not sure if it’s being actively developed anymore.
  • Specific libraries java-flutter
    1 project | /r/flutterhelp | 27 Jul 2022
    For iOS the RoboVM project intends to be an AOT compiler for Java bytecode.
  • Jetpack Compose announced for Web Development
    3 projects | /r/androiddev | 4 May 2021
  • Kotlin from zero with no previous programming experience
    1 project | /r/Kotlin | 14 Mar 2021
    Kotlin is not ideal for iOS development afaik (maybe with RoboVM). With regards to Android development, it is perfect. For desktop applications it's good, there are always tradeoffs here. With regards to payment, I believe it is generally the case that you're paid more the harder the language is to learn (so C > C# > Python). This also affects how much people are looking for a certain kind of developer - there are more JS jobs than jobs requiring a C++ developer. Kotlin is a good choice to start though. It's not too complicated, it's not so simple that it's limiting you somehow, it's not too slow for most applications (+ it supports native somewhat) and it has a good environment with stable libraries you can rely on.
  • Sorry Java, Write Once Run Anywhere (WORA) Is Now JavaScript
    1 project | news.ycombinator.com | 31 Jan 2021
    Yes, these are the native code compilers for Java, able to target Apple mobile platforms.

    https://www.codenameone.com/

    https://gluonhq.com/products/mobile/

    https://github.com/MobiVM/robovm

What are some alternatives?

When comparing Codename One and robovm you can also consider the following projects:

Multi-OS Engine - Multi-OS Engine: Create iOS Apps in Java (or Kotlin ... etc.)

JaCoCo - :microscope: Java Code Coverage Library

Design Patterns - Design patterns implemented in Java

JByteMod-Beta - Java bytecode editor

J2ObjC - A Java to iOS Objective-C translation tool and runtime.

proguard-core - Library to read, write, analyze, and process java bytecode

sitemapgen4j - SitemapGen4j is a library to generate XML sitemaps in Java.

ComposeClock - Particle clock created with Jetpack Compose framework

Maven Wrapper - The easiest way to integrate Maven into your project!

libGDX - Desktop/Android/HTML5/iOS Java game development framework

Modern Java - A Guide to Java 8 - Modern Java - A Guide to Java 8

proposal - Go Project Design Documents