Cocoa with Love
Matt Gallagher: Cocoa with Love

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Xcode

  • Sep 20, 2010

    Objective-C era

    Minimalist Cocoa programming

    In this post, I build and run a Cocoa Mac application on the command-line. This might not sound like a very difficult goal but I'll attempt to follow an additional constraint: use as few tools, components, classes and even lines of code as possible; truly minimalist Cocoa programming. The goal is to create an application that qualifies as a proper Mac application (including a menubar and a window) but without using Xcode, without an Info.plist file, without NIB files, without Interface Builder and without even using a text editor other than the Terminal itself.

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  • Apr 15, 2010

    Objective-C era

    Options for porting Objective-C/Cocoa apps to Windows

    There are a few different options for porting Objective-C/Cocoa applications to Windows. Each option has different advantages and offers different capabilities. In this post, I'll give an overview of some of these options, their advantages and disadvantages.

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  • Feb 8, 2010

    Objective-C era

    Custom build rules, generated tables and faster floating point

    As fast as computers are, heavy use of floating point functions can still slow them down. One way around this, is to use a lookup table instead of calculating floating point values at runtime. But keeping a generated table up-to-date is annoying work. In this post, I'll show you how to create a lookup table automatically using a custom build rule, making an OpenGL animation 5 times faster in the process.

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  • Feb 1, 2010

    Objective-C era

    Finding the cause of performance issues in your programs

    This post is a response to reader questions asking how, in my previous post on Replacing Core Data Key Paths, I knew that the biggest performance problem in my initial approach was the incremental reallocation of NSMutableSet. In this post, I'll look at basic time and memory profiling on the Mac and talk about the most common types of scenario to look for when you're trying to solve performance problems.

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  • Dec 27, 2009

    Objective-C era

    A sample iPhone application with complete unit tests

    In this post, I present a complete Cocoa Touch iPhone application implemented with unit tests for all created code. I'll look at setting up build and debug targets and executables for both Application and Logic tests, and show you some of the differences between Application and Logic tests. The code for this post is an iPhone version of the Mac post I presented last week.

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  • Dec 21, 2009

    Objective-C era

    A sample Mac application with complete unit tests

    In this post, I present a complete Cocoa Mac application implemented with unit tests for all created code. I'll create the tests first and then only add the code required to make the tests pass, largely following a test-driven development (TDD) methodology. Next week I'll show the configuration and implementation of this project as an iPhone application for the benefit of Cocoa Touch developers.

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  • Dec 12, 2009

    Objective-C era

    Multiple copy buffers, cursor and tab key tricks in Xcode

    This week, I'll show you a few keyboard related tricks for editing in Xcode, including setting up multiple copy-and-paste buffers by adjusting the key mappings, switching tabs on or off for autocomplete and other text editing quirks in Xcode like understanding why the "End" key doesn't move to the end of the line on the Mac.

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  • Sep 16, 2009

    Objective-C era

    Building for earlier OS versions from Snow Leopard

    It is very easy, when developing on a new operating system, to create projects that won't run on any previous OS version. To ensure backwards compatibility, there are Xcode and gcc options that allow you to build while maintaining support for earlier OS versions. In this post, I'll look at the ways in which this compatibility is controlled and some of the new ways it can go wrong on Snow Leopard.

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  • Jul 2, 2009

    Objective-C era

    Custom views in Interface Builder using IBPlugins

    If you have custom views configured in code, it can be time consuming to configure them for each instance and make them look right in context. To make the process smoother, you can create Interface Builder plugins and configure your objects in Interface Builder. While the Xcode documentation explains how to do this, it is long, thorough and confusing. Here is the simplified set of steps that I use to create Interface Builder plugins quickly.

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  • Mar 13, 2009

    Objective-C era

    Scripted window management in Xcode

    Xcode's placement of windows and views has never entirely satisfied me. In this post, I'll show you a series of Applescripts that I use to create my own arrangement of Xcode windows so that I can choose where different kinds of documents are placed and reorganize the layout of windows with basic key commands.

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  • Feb 1, 2009

    Objective-C era

    Interprocess communication: snooping, intercepting and subverting

    When Xcode is running, Interface Builder seems to magically know which classes, methods and variables are available. Where does Interface Builder get this information? How can you recreate this effect when editing source files in an external editor without Xcode running? This is the story of how I investigated the communication between Xcode and Interface Builder, so that I could recreate it for myself.

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  • Dec 6, 2008

    Objective-C era

    Instance variable to synthesized property (an Xcode user script)

    Xcode user scripts take the repetition out of many aspects of programming. To show you how this can work, here's a script I wrote to turn an instance variable into a property (complete with declaration and synthesis) just by selecting the variable and invoking the script.

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  • Nov 23, 2008

    Objective-C era

    Automated user interface testing on the iPhone

    Automated testing of application user interfaces can be tricky since user interfaces are designed for use by humans not automated tools. The iPhone is particularly challenging since existing tools that aid user interface testing on the Mac are not available. This post will show you a way to run automated, scripted tests on an iPhone app's user interface.

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  • Oct 25, 2008

    Objective-C era

    Debugging tips for Objective-C programming

    This post is about getting extra information from your program at runtime. Xcode and gdb both support a wide range of information access tools — but you need to know that they're there. Here are some Objective-C specific gdb tips and commands that all Cocoa programmers should know.

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