build.json file

[Nikhil Khandelwal]

I want to bring this to the attention of everyone that I have added a 
build.json for specifying signing parameters for different platforms as part of 
cordova build. Here are the design principles I used:

-          build.json should be used over config.xml for specifying build time 
behavior (as opposed to runtime). In the case of signing, it did not make sense 
to have paths to certs, passwords, signing identity info etc. to be part of 
config.xml and be packaged with the app itself.

-          build.json file has the following schema:
{
                     "<platformName>" : {
                                "debug" : {
                                                "<propertyName>" : 
"<propertyValue>"
                                },
                                "release" : {
                                                "<propertyName>" : 
"<propertyValue>"
                                },
                }

-          So far all properties that can be specified using build.json can be 
specified using command line args. Command line args take precedence if it's 
specified at both places.

-          By convention, a file named 'build.json' on the project root 
alongside 'config.xml' will be passed to platform CLI scripts with its location 
using the '--buildConfig' argument. There is a PR for this here: 
https://github.com/apache/cordova-lib/pull/215

Ideas for future:

-          Cordova CLI will allow to specify a custom build.json

-          Add docs for this talking about build.json

-          Unify parsing logic for build.json & command line args across 
platforms in a shared module.

-          Move some of the config.xml properties to build.json since they 
belong better there.

Let me know if you have any questions, ideas or concerns related to this.

Thanks,
Nikhil