Programming Tutorials

Tools for Cocoa Programming

By: Aaron Hillegass  

All the tools for Cocoa development come as part of the Mac OS X Developer Tools, and you get them for free with Mac OS X. Although the developer tools will add about a dozen handy applications to your system, you will use primarily two applications: Xcode and Interface Builder. Behind the scenes, the GNU C compiler (gcc) will be used to compile your code, and the GNU debugger (gdb) will help you find your errors.

Xcode tracks all the resources that will go into an application: code, images, sounds, and so on. You will edit your code in Xcode, and Xcode can compile and launch your application. Xcode can also be used to invoke and control the debugger.

Interface Builder is a GUI builder. It allows you to lay out windows and add widgets to those windows. It is, however, much more. Interface Builder allows the developer to create objects and edit their attributes. Most of those objects are UI elements, such as buttons and text fields, but some will be instances of classes that you create.

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