Slashdot Mirror
XCode Roundup
Durin_Deathless writes "XCode 1.5 is now available to the general public through ADC. Highlights include dead code stripping, remote debugging, Subversion support, and improved editor speed. There's also a new GCC, which is supposed to compile faster, and lots of AppleScript changes. Also, code completion now works in Java and AppleScript."
djabbour writes "Blizzard Entertainment develops its games simultaneously on the Windows and Mac OS X platforms. This article claims Xcode Tools 'play [a] critical role.'"
djabbour writes "Blizzard Entertainment develops its games simultaneously on the Windows and Linux platforms."
While the Slashdot community may have largely embraced the Mac platform since the release of the BSD/Mach based OS X, Mac != Linux.
Blizzard has had strong support for the Mac platform since its beginning; and it's nice to see that the Mac forms an integral part of their development process.
Live simply, that others may simply live. -Gandhi
Err, that's Windows and Mac OS X platforms, not windows and linux, yesh.
My email addy? should be easy enough.
probably because I didn't do a very interesting blurb
Or you didn't include the word "Linux"
dualg5:~ haschka$ gcc -v /usr/libexec/gcc/darwin/ppc/3.3/specs
Reading specs from
Thread model: posix
gcc version 3.3 20030304 (Apple Computer, Inc. build 1666)
gcc 3.5 is only available in Xcode 2 which is part of tiger
Though this piece of news is a bit old, it's still noteworthy. Xcode, IMHO, is amazing and fun to use. Version 1.2 was too buggy, but I've found 1.5 to be a great improvement. I'm sure version 1.5.1 is on its way soon, if you read the Release Notes carefully enough, Apple admits to releasing 1.5 with 10 to 12 bugs, in semi-basic feature areas, most of which cause Xcode to crash.
There are other IDE's available for other platforms, and though Xcode is one of the only ones for the Mac aside from CodeWarrior, I'd still give kudos to it, and Apple for making it.
They seem to be really paying attention to what developers need. They're greatly improved their documentation in the past year, and Xcode is pretty darn developer friendly, now supporting Subversion.
probably because I didn't do a very interesting blurb
Or you didn't include the word "Linux"
That's the trick! In whatever summary submitted, throw in an irrelevant and possibly false comment about Linux!
100 Terabyte 3.5-inch Optical Storage: Could store lots of copies of Linux on that!
Wired on Defeating the Olympics Censorship: Did you know that all of the Olympians are required to use Linux?
How Secure is Windows Firewall?: It's got stolen Linux source code in it and it still suX0rz!
As much as I love Apple, I'm a disappointed by this Blizzard article. I preface all this by saying that I've been Mac OS dev for several years now and love Apple's OS quality ethic to the marrow. However, I also co-develop my source base under Win32 all these years under, of course CodeWarrior. So, to be clear, I've been developing cross-platform cores for both platforms under CodeWarrior for years now (using the Mac OS IDE--I'd rather quit software than use an IDE in the Windows environment with Windows "standards"). It's only been in this last year that Xcode itself (ie, not tools, such as CHUD) is finally about to pass CodeWarrior overall.
I'm disappointed with this article because it's basically just rah-rah-rah (as in cheerleading) and speaks little to a small company cross platform dev (like me). In other words, it's great that company the size of Blizzard has enough devs to have Windows teams, Mac OS team, and cross-platform teams (such that each team uses a native IDE and compiler) but smaller companies don't have that kind of firepower. In other words, as a dev who targets Win32 and Mac OS, I don't have the time to use Xcode for Mac OS and VisualStudio for Win32. Because it's meant to be PR, I won't harp on how the article doesn't contain a shed of detail (like one poster here commented, they say they use the Xcode tools, not Xcode itself).
On that note, CodeWarrior still is impressive across the board for *both* Win32 and Mac OS projects. The time and effort they've put into the size and flexibility of the various pref panes and project item control has paid off; it's provided unmatched project control and continues to reign superior (disclaimer: I've yet to give Xcode 1.5 a close look).
My biggest reason for not jumping to Xcode (from CodeWarrior) is that I'd still have to build my projects for Win32 under CodeWarrior after switching to Xcode. Bottom line is that now I'd be juggling two project sets with no significant gain from the switch to Xcode. My decision to switch to Xcode will be based on two factors: what Xcode 2 brings to the table and if Metrowerks releases an entirely new version of CodeWarrior (ie, CW Pro 10). If the latter does not happen by the time Xcode 2 is released (mid 2005?), CodeWarrior's Mac OS support will simply be just too out of date to run with.
G-Force music visualization
"Xcode Tools" is Apple's official name for the entire suite of developer tools, while "Xcode" is just the name of the IDE. Given that this is an official Apple PR article, I don't find it surprising that they conform to this naming protocol.
(On a side note, this has caused confusion in the past. For one update (I believe it was 1.2), there was the Xcode 1.2 Update Available automatically through Software Update, which only updated the IDE. There was the separate Xcode Tools 1.2 download (not available automatically) that contained more updates for the entire suite. The product manager thus discovered that no one downloads ReadMe files for products before downloading the product itself.)