With the so-called Tiger release of Mac OS X, due the first half of 2005, Apple Computer Inc. will unleash Xcode 2, a version of its rapid development environment that it claims will work with enhancements to the operating system that automatically generate object models, thereby simplifying application development. Xcode 2 also will introduce modeling, include the gcc 4.0 compiler optimized for G4 and G5 processors, and support 64-bit development.
Xcode 2: New Model of Development
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Eugenia Loli
Ex-programmer, ex-editor in chief at OSNews.com, now a visual artist/filmmaker.
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I think Apple currently delivers the best computing tools for the money one spends on them.
so-called?
Does anyone have a proposed feature set of GCC 4.0? the PowerPC features? improvements? it seems rather strange considering that the next version IIRC is going to be 3.5, or have they scraped 3.5 in favour of simply making it 4.0?
It should be gcc 3.4
No, I’d say its 4.0, just had a look at the GCC website, and 4.0 will be the next version. Its almost there, once the final milestone is reached, beta versions will be ready and the final will be out by the end of this year, beginning of next.
Remember, MacOS 10.4 isn’t going to be released until the first half of next year.
The article hints that one of the most important part of Tiger is “Core Data”. What is this and where can I find more info about it?
Paul
GCC 4.0 merges the tree-ssa branch into the trunk. That’s the best thing to happen to GCC since, well, it began supporting C++. It really cleans things up and lets independent compiler optimization pass writers contribute to GCC.
I thought IBM developed a compiler specifically for the 970 (G5) b/c something about the way that the processor is designed that it doesn’t fit well with how GCC views the architecture of a processor.
Is Apple not using this compiler? Or simply not shipping it but using it in-house now?
The IBM compiler isn’t OS as gcc is and so they cannot give it way. I believe the IBM compiler is meant to be a lot better but that isn’t really a shock considering the relatively small resources of PowerPC GCC.
Cannot wait to try out the UML’esk modeling. I hope that GCC 4.0 has the automatic vectorization that I believe 3.5 has.
Xcode is fantastic. Simple to use and it does what you need it to do. Has some faults as does any software but considering it’s free it’s amazing. If I had money I would be quite happy to pay for it.
The best thing about this update is:
“The benefit is that programs that use mathematical forms that are vectorizable will see significant performance benefits.”
Woohoo. Finally. I think next year may be the year I finally get a Dual G5 tower o’ power
I was wonderin if there will be Cocoa / C++ support in XCode 2. Does any one know of any tutorials/books or C++/Cococa UI development on Mac? I don’t want to learn Objective-C if I don’t have to.
Any ideas?
Thanx
I really like Apple’s development tools but never could bring myself to liking objective C much. I’m excited to look at these.
umm, you can develop the back end of a program in C++, then you just need to add certain things so that you can build an interface in interface builder and connect it.
A beta versio of gfortran (new Fortran 95 compiler) is expected with gcc 4.0.
There is little info about Core Data without being an ADC member, but here’s a brief description:
“Cocoa has long provided a world-class solution for application user-interface development. And in Panther, Cocoa started providing pre-built controller objects (the “Bindings” layer) to connect various UI elements together with data models. Now in Tiger, Cocoa can manage your data objects themselves through the power of Core Data, providing automatic undo/redo support, additional user interface synchronization, and data consistency, correctness, and speed enhancements when it’s time to write to disk.
Core Data gives you the ability to create a description of your data objects. Once defined, Core Data handles most of the heavy work of managing your data objects, both in-memory and on-disk. This allows you to focus on application logic and avoid the infrastructure work. In short, Core Data is a model-driven object management graph and persistence framework.
In Tiger, Core Data will support three different kinds of files for storage of data:
A text-based XML file format
A better performing binary file format
A high-performance, SQLite-based database file format
Each of these file formats has its strengths. The XML file format is a good choice during the development of an application as it allows you to peek inside the file and see what is going on. The SQLite format will often be the best choice for desktop applications because of its performance characteristics.”
See this link for an overview of all new development features in Tiger:
http://developer.apple.com/macosx/tiger/index.html
The article hints that one of the most important part of Tiger is “Core Data”. What is this and where can I find more info about it?
Paul
Ever use Enterprise Object Frameworks (EOF) for Cocoa? EOF was integral in Openstep applications and default for WebObjects Cocoa via ObjC (the predecessor to WebObjects Java and quite superior to the Java version).
http://lists.apple.com/archives/webobjects-dev/2004/Jun/msg00450.ht…
This next article has quite a bit of the dirt.
http://c2.com/cgi/wiki?CocoaFramework
Hopefully Adobe will make native cocoa app’s and take advantage of Core Audio/video/image. I am no writer, but it seems to me Apple has devoloped and continues to add nice tools in the box for developers. Also given Apple’s ability to show off the technology in native cocoa app’s like Motion and Dvd Studio Pro(rewritten).
The IBM compiler you’re thinking of is XLC. Here’s a link: http://www-306.ibm.com/software/awdtools/xlcpp/features/macosx/xlcp…
Supposedly, it offers great speed improvements over GCC for powerpc code, even when the code is executed on G4’s and G3’s. But, supposedly it’s also not as compatible as gcc is, and Apple still uses GCC for all of it’s software (don’t quote me on that though). Either way, XLC is not free, so that’s why the default compiler with the free Xcode IDE is GCC rather than XLC.
Hopefully Adobe will make native cocoa app’s and take advantage of Core Audio/video/image. I am no writer, but it seems to me Apple has devoloped and continues to add nice tools in the box for developers. Also given Apple’s ability to show off the technology in native cocoa app’s like Motion and Dvd Studio Pro(rewritten).
Adobe has been given 7 years to build a team of Cocoa/ObjC developers. If they don’t you’ll soon see Adobe pulling support from OS X and spin it that Apple Market isn’t large enough, instead of investing in Cocoa devs.
Thanks all. Core Data looks great. I’ve been able to find good information about it here: http://www.cocoadev.com/index.pl?CoreData
I believe I remember that XCode does do syntax highlighting for Python and various other languages than the C family and Java. What would be great is debugging for Python and other such languages (Ruby, Perl).
Related to this, it would be interesting if Apple released the source for XCode. Possibly we could see a port to other *nix platforms or even MS Windows. This could be a good thing because it would enable a larger audience to gain experience with Apple’s development tools and could possibly win over more developers to join the “Mac side”.
“Adobe has been given 7 years to build a team of Cocoa/ObjC developers. If they don’t you’ll soon see Adobe pulling support from OS X and spin it that Apple Market isn’t large enough, instead of investing in Cocoa devs.”
Why are so sure that Cocoa is the only way? The carbon/cocoa APIs are supposed to be equally supported by Apple. To suggest that Adobe rewrite all their apps using cocoa calls rather than carbon seems a bit…Netscape.