blog: Add cordova-ios 8.0.0 release

www/_posts/2025-11-23-cordova-ios-8.0.0.md

@@ -0,0 +1,72 @@
+---
+layout: post
+author:
+    name: Darryl Pogue
+    url: https://dpogue.ca
+title:  "Cordova iOS 8.0.0 is now available!"
+categories: announcements
+tags: news releases
+---
+
+After nearly 2 years of work, we are excited to finally announce that we have released **Cordova iOS 8.0.0**! This is Cordova's platform supporting the development of applications for iOS & iPadOS; now with better support for the latest platform features.
+
+* [[email protected]](https://www.npmjs.com/package/cordova-ios)
+
+**To upgrade:**
+
+```bash
+cordova platform remove ios
+cordova platform add [email protected]
+```
+
+**This is a major version release which includes some breaking changes!**  
+We have tried hard to make the update process as smooth as possible for both application and plugin developers, while improving the experience for developers embedding Cordova iOS as a library.
+
+For plugin authors, we've written a guide about [Upgrading Plugins to Cordova iOS 8.x](https://apache.github.io/cordova-ios/documentation/cordova/upgrading-8?language=objc).
+
+## Release Highlights
+
+* **Supported version minimums**
+    * The minimum supported **iOS** version is now 13.
+    * The minimum supported **Xcode** version is now 15.
+    * The minimum supported **NodeJS** version is now 20.17.
+
+* **Embracing Swift**
+    * The platform project now uses Swift classes and a storyboard file.
+    * Plugins can now be set up as Swift packages, including other Swift packages as dependencies.
+    * CordovaLib is available as a Swift package to be embedded in existing projects.
+
+* **Platform project modernizing**
+    * The Xcode project, and build target are now always named `App`.  
+      This resolves numerous issues around CocoaPods, multi-target projects, and Info.plist additions, but potentially breaks some hooks that assume the project name matches what's defined in config.xml.
+    * The platform project now supports building for macOS using Catalyst.
+    * The platform project has adopted the iOS Scene APIs, which are required for iOS 26 support.
+    * CordovaLib (used as a library) supports targeting the visionOS platform.
+
+* **Build-in status bar handling**
+    * Status bar handling is now built-in to Cordova iOS, and the StatusBar plugin is no longer required in most cases.
+    * Whether the status bar is shown or not is controlled by the viewport meta tag's `viewport-fit` directive.
+    * The background color of the status bar is controlled by the theme-color meta tag.
+
+* **App icon simplification**
+    * Projects can now provide a single 1024px × 1024px icon in config.xml.
+    * Projects building with Xcode 16 or newer can provide monochrome and dark mode icon variants.
+    * See [GH-1465](https://github.com/apache/cordova-ios/pull/1465) for details.
+    * **NOTE:** Cordova iOS 8.0.0 does not include support for the new Xcode 26 Icon Composer file format. We hope to introduce support in the near future.
+
+* **Bunches of bugs fixed**
+    * Range requests are now supported for large media files when using a custom protocol.
+    * Opening system alert boxes from JavaScript code should no longer freeze the application.
+    * Improved error messaging when no iOS simulators are installed.
+    * Configurable behavior for recovering from web view crashes that sometimes left blank screens.
+    * Fix for `handleOpenURL()` not firing reliably when the app is launched.
+    * Improve handling for the `deployment-target` preference with CocoaPods.
+
+* **Embedded framework improvements**
+    * Several memory leaks have been fixed when disposing of a Cordova view controller.
+    * Several API improvements for specifying background colours and splash screen behaviour.
+    * Introduced `CDVSceneDelegate` for integrating with the iOS Scene API.
+    * Added nullability annotations to several classes and API methods.
+    * New [API documentation](https://apache.github.io/cordova-ios/) is published for the CordovaLib classes.
+
+The full changelog is available to read [here](https://github.com/apache/cordova-ios/blob/rel/8.0.0/RELEASENOTES.md). Please report any issues you find on our [Cordova-iOS](https://github.com/apache/cordova-iOS/issues) GitHub issue tracker!