ToolChain
Latest
Microsoft pulling free development tools for Windows 8 desktop apps, only lets you ride the Metro for free (update: confirmed)
Microsoft has instituted a big change with its free Visual Studio 11 Express suite that's leaving some current- and soon-to-be Windows 8 developers up in arms: it's pulling support for creating anything but Metro-native apps. After 11 becomes the norm, desktop developers will need to either cling to Visual Studio 2010 for dear life or fork over the $500 for Visual Studio 11 Professional. Programmers won't have the option of backdoor coding, either, with both the compiler and toolchain being pulled from Windows' framework. The situation doesn't represent the end of the world for some developers -- more established pros don't balk at a $500 price, and third-party tools will likely live on -- but it sets a much higher price of entry for desktop apps developed through the official route, especially if you want to write games using XNA. We've reached out to Microsoft for a response, but for now we'd suggest setting aside five Benjamins if Start screen tiles and app charms aren't your cups of tea. Update: We've confirmed with a Microsoft spokesperson that it's true you'll need Professional if you want to write desktop apps using Visual Studio. It's equally correct, though, that third-party developer kits will keep building desktop apps as long as they have their own compilers and related tools. Students can get Professional for free if they're in the Dreamspark program.
iPhone Coding: Leopard-compatible Binary Toolchain Installer
Looking to compile software for the iPhone and iPod touch under Leopard? There are two approaches: You can download the latest toolchain svn from Google Code or you can use a legacy toolchain installer that just happens to work under Leopard. Last night, Nicholas "Drudge" Penree pointed me towards a copy of Elliot Kroo's legacy 0.04 toolchain installer. This installer dates back to the "bad old days" of arm-apple-darwin-cc, before the better gcc version appeared. On the other hand, a working solution is a working solution so I'm not complaining. After downloading, I mounted the disk image, ran the installer and then the "ooh shiny" program. To make this work, I had to install a copy of the iPhone disk as /usr/local/arm-apple-darwin/heavenly. There are various methods for getting a copy of your 1.1.1 disk floating around the net up to and including decrypting the install dmg from Apple. Google for details if you're unsure how to do this. Next, since this is a VERY legacy install, I had to edit my .arm-cc-specs and fuss with them until they matched my system. Finally, I grabbed a copy of my old libarmfp.dylib file and put everywhere I could think of until I got some existing projects to compile. I believe my final places to put it were /usr/local/arm-apple-darwin/heavenly/usr/lib/ and /usr/local/local.toolchain/heavenly/usr/lib but you'll have to hunt around on your own system to see where it fits. You'll be looking to put it in the same folder that has the working gcc_s_v6.1 library. After this, I ended up with a working--albeit legacy--toolchain running under Leopard. I'll download and compile the new toolchain at some point but this gives me some much-appreciated breathing space before I need to do that.
Installing the iPhone Developer Toolchain: A simple How-To
Yesterday, stepping into iPhone development got a lot easier. "Kroo", an iPhone developer, put together this Binary Toolchain Installer for Intel Macs. Instead of taking two days to download, debug and compile, installation takes a few minutes. Download a copy and install and you're set to start programming. You'll need to copy your iPhone files to your Macintosh for the toolchain (and the toolchain installation) to work. You can either use a tool like scp -r and connect to your hacked iPhone or you can copy the file system from one of the iTunes restore software dmgs--google for details. Rename the root of the iPhone file system "heavenly" and place it into /usr/local/arm-apple-darwin. Then run the installer. One more thing: All the makefiles I have posted here at TUAW use the old toolchain. To use my makefiles with this new toolchain, you'll need to update the Makefile header as such. Looking for a little hand-holding? Head over to irc.osx86.hu and connect to #iphone-uikit.
In which, iPhone apps are built
It turns out that creating new GUI iPhone apps is both harder and easier than you expect. Saturday night when the first iPhone UI app proof-of-concept appeared, I was tied up with family. I frantically emailed Mike Rose begging him to get a post out, which, wonderful man that he is, he did. Sunday, I grabbed what time I could, intent on testing out the new developer toolchain produced by Nightwatch and company. In summary: if you can wait for an already-compiled binary toolchain to emerge, do so. The developers have done all they can to make building the tools as simple a process as possible. The folks on the irc.osx86.hu #iphone-uikit channel are helpful and supportive. But the bottom line is pre-alpha means pre-alpha. There many rough compiling patches along the way where I ended up hitting my head against the wall, convinced I could never get the tools built. I had to edit the source several times to get it to compile on my Intel Mac Mini.
