NativeScript Framework Breaking Changes

This help article describes the critical breaking changes and suggested workarounds, if any, in the NativeScript framework. You can find the complete list with all the changes in the respective GitHub repositories.

5.0 (2018, November 6)

Dropped support for XCode 8.
Dropped support for macOS Sierra.
Android SDK 28 or later is required to build for Android devices.
Minimum supported version of nativescript-ui-sidedrawer is 5.0.0.
Android: NativeScript core framework now extends support library APIs versus native framework classes as per Google's latest guidelines (#6129) (cf034dd):
- NativeScript activities now extend android.support.v7.app.AppCompatActivity (vs android.app.Activity)
- NativeScript fragments now extend android.support.v4.app.Fragment (vs android.app.Fragment)
- NativeScript now works internally with android.support.v4.app.FragmentManager (vs android.app.FragmentManager)
Layout class (tns-core-modules/ui/layouts/layout) is now removed as it is not used in {N} framework any more.
Android: Change androidOffscreenTabLimit to 1 when using bottom tabs of tab-view (#6476) (371fc9b).
iOS: Widgets native view lifecycle refactoring - native view is now created right before they are added to visual tree (#6102) (46705ee).
iOS: Widgets that inherit the ContainerView class now overflow the safe area by default (#6230) (982acdc).

Migration steps can be found in the NativeScript's GitHub Repository.

3.0 (2017, May 3)

Changes and migration advice is available in the NativeScript repository here.

1.6.0 (2016, February 17)

Up to v 1.6.0, the background drawable attribute of the buttons in Android was always replaced. To keep the consistency with the default platform-specific background, the attribute is not changed now and the button is only styled.

1.5.0 (2015, November 24)

The XML namespace (xmlns) of the validator XSD schema changed from xmlns="http://www.nativescript.org/tns.xsd" to xmlns="http://schemas.nativescript.org/tns.xsd". For convenience, the file can now be downloaded via the same URL.
Automatic memory management of CoreFoundation functions marked with CF_IMPLICIT_BRIDGING_ENABLED. You should delete any CFRelease() calls on the result of Create/Copy functions.
Manual memory management of CoreFoundation functions not-marked with CF_IMPLICIT_BRIDGING_ENABLED. You should call takeRetainedValue()/takeUnretainedValue() on the result object of such functions. See the docs for more info.

1.4.0 (2015, October 12)

(#774) The Animation class no longer has a finished property because an animation can be played multiple times. The play method now returns a new Promise each time it is invoked. Use this to listen for the animation finishing or being cancelled. When upgrading to version 1.4.0 or above, simply remove .finished from your code.

Old Code (JavaScript):

animation1.play().finished.then(function () { console.log("Finished"); });

New Code (JavaScript):

animation1.play().then(function () { console.log("Finished"); });

Old Code (TypeScript):

animation1.play().finished.then(()=>console.log("Finished"));

New Code (JavaScript):

animation1.play().then(()=>console.log("Finished"));

1.3.0 (2015, September 16)

There are multiple breaking changes in this release.

NativeScript modules use and depend on the app-compatibility library (android-support-v7-appcompat) for Android. To work properly, the theme of the application should be based on Theme.AppCompat.Light.NoActionBar. If you have defined custom Android style.xml files in the App_Resources\Android\values[-v21] folders, you will have to change the parent theme of the AppTheme (or AppThemeBase if you have such) to Theme.AppCompat.Light.NoActionBar (in both values and values-v21 folders). For reference, the default content of those files can be found in the default project template for Android.
Core NativeScript modules are published as a separate package in npmjs.com.
library add command is deprecated and will be removed completely in one of our next releases (currently scheduled for 1.5).

You cannot create NativeScript plugins with Android native code using Eclipse projects. You need to import your Eclipse project into Android Studio, convert it to Gradle build and consume the produced AAR file.

You cannot use Apache Ant to create new projects for Android, but you can continue build your existing Ant-based projects. Starting with NativeScript 1.3, Android builds require Gradle. Run tns doctor on the command line to learn more.
Building NativeScript projects for Android requires Android SDK 22, Android SDK Build-tools 22, Android Support Repository and the ANDROID_HOME environment variable set.
NSDecimalNumber is marshalled as an Objective-C object wrapper instead of JavaScript number.

1.2.0 (2015, July 24)

There are changes in how the Android ActionBar/IOS NavigationBar is configured. UI is now defined with page.actionBar instead of page.optionsMenu. See an example...

0.10.0 (2015, April 17)

This release introduces a new project directory structure. Projects from earlier releases have the following structure:

.
└── hello-world
    ├── app
    │   ├── app
    │   │   ├── app.css
    │   │   ├── app.js
    │   │   ├── bootstrap.js
    │   │   ├── main-page.js
    │   │   └── main-page.xml
    │   ├── App_Resources
    │   │   └── ...
    │   └── tns_modules
    │       └── ...
    └── platforms
        └── ...

Starting with version 0.10, the inner app folder has been removed. Newly created projects have the following structure:

.
└── hello-world
    ├── app
    │   ├── app.css
    │   ├── app.js
    │   ├── bootstrap.js
    │   ├── main-page.js
    │   ├── main-page.xml
    │   ├── App_Resources
    │   │   └── ...
    │   └── tns_modules
    │       └── ...
    └── platforms
        └── ...

To migrate to the new structure, complete the following steps:

Manually move all files and folders from the inner app folder one level up inside the outer app folder.

Remove the now empty inner app folder.

NativeScript Core