Back to Blog
tvOScross-compilationbillingWindowsmilestone

tvOS, Cross-Compile iOS from Linux, and Perry Login

Five days, 120 commits, and Perry jumps from v0.4.0 to v0.4.24. The highlights: tvOS becomes the 10th compilation target, iOS and macOS apps can now be built entirely from Linux, perry login brings usage-based billing, and the Windows UI gets a complete overhaul. Here's everything that shipped.

tvOS: The 10th Compilation Target

Perry now compiles to Apple TV. The tvOS target uses the same SwiftUI renderer as watchOS, sharing the data-driven architecture where Perry builds a UI tree and a shipped Swift host app renders it natively. Combined with the existing @perry/threads WASM integration, tvOS apps can run compute-heavy workloads in the background while keeping the UI responsive.

# Compile for Apple TV
perry compile main.ts --target tvos

# Run on tvOS simulator
perry run tvos

This brings the total target count to 10: macOS, iOS, iPadOS, Android, Linux, Windows, watchOS, tvOS, WebAssembly, and Web/JavaScript. One TypeScript codebase, ten native outputs.

Cross-Compile iOS and macOS from Linux

Perry can now build iOS and macOS binaries entirely from a Linux machine using ld64.lld as the Mach-O linker. This is the missing piece for fully automated CI/CD — push TypeScript to a Linux server, get signed native binaries for every Apple platform without a macOS build machine.

Getting here required solving a cascade of linker issues:

  • Mach-O codegen triple — added aarch64-apple-macos and aarch64-apple-ios target triples for Cranelift
  • Framework linking — CoreGraphics, Metal, IOKit, DiskArbitration framework search paths for cross-compile
  • -lobjc — ObjC runtime symbols needed for all Apple targets
  • SDK version — sdk_version 26.0 in ld64.lld (Apple requires iOS 18+)
  • Dead stripping — -dead_strip instead of -Wl,-dead_strip for the Mach-O linker
  • Runtime dedup — strip duplicate perry_runtime from UI static libs to avoid link errors

Combined with the existing Linux → Windows cross-compilation (v0.2.195+), Perry can now cross-compile to every platform from Linux — iOS, macOS, Windows, Android, WASM, and Web.

iOS App Store Readiness

A major focus this cycle was making Perry-compiled iOS apps fully App Store compliant:

  • Full Info.plist — all Apple-required keys: CFBundleIdentifier, CFBundleName, CFBundleShortVersionString, CFBundleVersion, UIDeviceFamily, UIRequiredDeviceCapabilities
  • CFBundleIcons — standard iOS icon naming (AppIcon60x60@2x, etc.) with fallback resolution
  • Version from perry.toml — version and build_number fields flow directly into the Info.plist
  • UILaunchScreen — uses the modern key instead of UILaunchStoryboardName (no storyboard file needed)
  • Provisioning profiles — macOS provisioning profile support for App Store and TestFlight distribution

Perry Login and Billing

Perry now has accounts and usage-based billing, powered by a new perry login CLI command and a dashboard at app.perryts.com.

How It Works

  • perry login — GitHub OAuth device flow, opens browser, polls for completion
  • Free tier — 15 builds/month, unlimited projects with a GitHub account
  • Pro tier — unlimited builds via Polar.sh subscription
  • API tokens — generate and manage tokens from the dashboard for CI/CD
  • Usage tracking — monthly publish and verify counters with real-time usage bars

The dashboard itself is a Perry-compiled Fastify server with a Next.js static export — built with Perry, serving Perry users.

macOS Notarization and Code Signing

Two new signing capabilities:

  • perry publish macos --notarize — automatically switches to Developer ID certificate (instead of App Store cert), submits to Apple's notarization service, and staples the result
  • GCloud KMS code signing — Windows builds can now be signed using Google Cloud KMS keys, enabling automated signing in CI without exposing private keys

Windows UI Overhaul

The Windows UI backend received its most comprehensive update yet:

  • DPI-aware scaling — window size, fonts, and widget dimensions scale correctly on high-DPI displays
  • Launcher-style window APIs — borderless windows with custom positioning for launcher/spotlight-style UIs
  • Global hotkeys — system-wide keyboard shortcuts that work even when the app isn't focused
  • App icons — getAppIcon API for displaying application icons in launcher UIs
  • Reentrancy-safe layout — RefCell-based painting replaced with SetPropW HWND storage to prevent panics during nested WM_PAINT messages
  • Geisterhand integration — all widget types registered with the UI testing framework, /type uses SendMessageW via HWND map
  • Android camera support — camera capture API extended to Android via JNI

Performance

v0.4.14 shipped a comprehensive performance audit:

  • Native fcmp — floating-point comparisons use native CPU instructions instead of runtime function calls. Mandelbrot benchmark 30% faster.
  • In-place string append — str += "text" modifies the buffer in place instead of allocating a new string. 125x faster for repeated concatenation.
  • Short-circuit AND/OR — && and || skip evaluation of the right operand when the result is already determined.
  • Negative literal folding — -1, -0.5 etc. are folded to constants at HIR level instead of emitting a negation instruction.

Hub Parallel Builds

The build orchestration server now supports concurrent builds per worker:

  • Slot-based dispatch — workers report max_concurrent capacity, Hub tracks active jobs per worker
  • No more 429s — jobs queue instead of being rejected when all workers are busy
  • Base64 artifact downloads — binary artifacts served as base64 when the Perry runtime can't handle raw binary HTTP responses
  • Auto-reconnect WebSocket — build monitoring connections automatically reconnect on disconnect

New Package: perry/appstorereview

A new first-party package for prompting app store reviews:

import { requestReview } from "perry/appstorereview";

// Opens the native review prompt
// iOS: SKStoreReviewController
// Android: Play In-App Review API
requestReview();

One function, two platforms, native review UI. Timing and display logic is left entirely to the developer.

Codegen Fixes

120 commits means a lot of bug fixes. The most impactful:

  • Strict equality (===) — three separate bugs fixed in v0.4.2: type tag comparison, NaN handling, and null/undefined distinction
  • String comparison for concatenated strings — === failed when comparing strings built via concatenation due to pointer comparison instead of content comparison
  • Constructor resolution — new X(args) now correctly resolves cross-module imported constructors and closure-based constructor functions
  • Module-level array push — values pushed to module-level arrays inside nested function calls in loops were lost due to stale pointers after reallocation
  • Null arithmetic coercion — null + 1 now correctly produces 1 via js_number_coerce
  • Bitwise NOT wrapping — ~x now wraps to i32 as per ECMAScript semantics
  • fetch().then() — callbacks never fired in native UI apps due to missing event loop drain (v0.4.3)
  • WASM modulo and exponent — % and ** operators caused WASM validation errors (v0.4.5)

By the Numbers

  • ~120 commits to the main Perry compiler in 5 days
  • 24 patch releases: v0.4.1 → v0.4.24
  • Compilation targets: 9 → 10 (added tvOS)
  • Cross-compile targets from Linux: Windows → Windows, iOS, macOS (all Apple + Windows)
  • New packages: perry/appstorereview
  • New infrastructure: app.perryts.com dashboard, perry login CLI, Polar.sh billing
  • Performance gains: 30% faster mandelbrot (native fcmp), 125x faster string concatenation

What's Next

Cross-compiling iOS and macOS from Linux means the Hub can now build for every platform from a single Linux server — no more dedicated macOS build machines for compilation (only for signing). The billing infrastructure opens the path to Hub public beta. And with tvOS added, Perry covers every Apple platform: macOS, iOS, iPadOS, watchOS, and tvOS.

  • Hub public beta — external users can push TypeScript and get native binaries
  • Full regex support — the last major language gap
  • perry/ui expansion — drag and drop, accessibility, DatePicker
  • Source maps & debug info — DWARF debug info for native debugging

Follow the progress on GitHub, read the docs at docs.perryts.com, or check the roadmap for the full picture.