NativeScript 5.3 is available. With this new version, Hot Module Replacement officially enters the mobile app development framework. What else has happened?

With version 5.3, the latest release of NativeScript is available for download. One of the key features of the release is the robust implementation of Hot Module Replication, which was beta-enabled in previous versions of NativeScript. With the flag as stable, the NativeScript team now states that the feature is ready for general deployment. Support for SASS files and pre-built Angular support are available for the Hot Module Replacement. Also possible when using the feature are script changes in Vue.js and debugging in VS code.

NativeScript 5.3: Support for iOS App Extensions

NativeScript 5.3 also came with initial support for iOS App Extensions, which can use native layout components for iOS. So far, however, it has been necessary to make manual adjustments to the App Extension Binaries in order to use them in NativeScript. Now the extension types “Share” and “Today” can be used without such effort. It is also planned to implement similar support for extensions for watchOS and tvOS.

Other new features of the release include the resolution of a bottleneck on Android builds, which should reduce the time required for a build. Also for iOS was worked on the performance, in this case in terms of startup time.

30% Faster builds for Android

Waiting for a build to complete is arguably the least satisfying way to spend your working day. The bad news is you will now have much less time for fencing while at work. They managed to optimize a huge part of the NativeScript Android build process and, depending on your specific application and build machine, the gain could be between 20% and 35%.

For our curious readers: the bottleneck was caused by the huge number of jar files from the native Android dependencies. They managed to optimize the process of finding the jar files we need to extract, which led to the mentioned speed up.

More information about these and other changes to NativeScript 5.3 can be found in the blog post for the release of Emil Tabakov.