for a desktop application I am developing, I have to stick with a 32-bit framework. I am looking for the best path to run the framework in its proper process and develop the rest of the application in a 64-bit process. The application is also meant to be sold in the AppStore, so it should support Apple sandboxing.
I am thinking about XPC: is it suitable for these purposes? Why can't I find it in the Apple documentation related to cross-architecture programming?
XPC: is it suitable for these purposes?
Yes, XPC should work correctly between 32-bit and 64-bit processes.
Why can't I find it in the Apple documentation related to cross-architecture programming?
Because XPC is new in 10.7, and that 64-bit Transition Guide document is rather old and hasn't been updated since 10.6. Apple is not always good at updating older documentation.
Related
There was a time, not two years ago, when you could didn't need Xamarin.Mac to deploy Mono apps to the Mac App Store. To be clear, that's the store for Mac OS X desktop apps, not iOS apps.
Now the MonoMacPackager page says the following:
If you want to create self-contained Mac bundles or publish your
software to the Mac AppStore, you should get Xamarin.Mac which is a
strict superset of MonoMac.
I haven't seen a good tutorial of how to release to the Mac App Store since Xamarin.Mac came out. Is Xamarin.Mac now "required", so to speak, to release Mono apps on Mac that have UIs written in XCode/IB? Or is the "subset" which is MonoMac still enough to create these hybrid apps?
I realize I could write against GTK# or Windows.Forms and have users install Mono themselves -- or use bockbuild like Banshee still does and have things self-contained -- to create standalone apps. I'm interested instead in the ability to have Mono code interface with native UIs created in XCode and to release those apps on the Mac App Store.
I also realize there's a template for open source projects in Xamarin Studio now, which actually kind of scares me. It seems the full treatment has gone behind the Xamarin pay wall.
So, in other words, is the MonoMacPackager obsolete with respect to releasing Mono apps with native UIs that pass Mac App Store muster?
The thing is, to be able to release into the Mac App Store, your app needs to be self-contained. Which means that you need to use mkbundle, which in turn means that the license of the Mono runtime would then contaminate everything. This license is LGPL.
If your app cannot legally bind to the requirements of the LGPL, then you need a Xamarin.Mac license.
Now, if you think your app can legally bind to the requirements of the LGPL, then the deal is a bit more tricky: are you sure that you can? Because many articles out there say that the theoretical restrictions of the ToS of the Mac App Store contradict GPL/LGPL licenses.
Some other people say that this conflict can be kind of circumvented... But I wouldn't try without the advice of a lawyer.
UPDATE: Turns out there's a difference in the way you use mkbundle, read more here. (And note: the Mac App Store has different restrictions than the iOS AppStore I think.)
I have a plan to build a web-site which running CGI made with Cocoa.
My final goal is develop on Mac OS X, and run on FreeBSD.
Is this possible?
As I know, there is a free implementation of some NextStep classes, the GNUStep.
The web-site is almost built with only strings. I read GNUStep documents, classes are enough. DB connection will be made with C interfaces.
Most biggest problem which I'm concerning is linking and binary compatibility. I'm currently configuring FreeBSD on VirtualBox, but I wanna know any possibility informations about this from experts.
This is not a production server. Just a trial. Please feel free to saying anything.
--edit--
I confused Foundation and Cocoa frameworks. What I said was Foundation. Basic classes which just enough to manipulating strings.
It’s entirely possible to cross-develop using Xcode. The Cocotron does this – and provides an implementation of Foundation – but doesn’t currently target FreeBSD. You could probably use it as a template to set up cross-development for BSD targets using GNUstep, but it won’t be easy.
You should be OK with the GNUstep Foundation on FreeBSD 9.0 with Objective-C 2 (clang). See these instructions.
Note: Do not installing under '/' with a FreeBSD default install, because it has little space on the '/' partition. I've used /usr/local/gnustep instead, and made some links as the instructions suggest.
Note II: GNUstep sources from subversion repository didn't compile for me, so I used the latest stable GNUstep sources.
Yes, you can do this, and I am doing it right now successfully using FreeBSD 8.2 and Xcode 4.0, running the Foundation class from The Cocotron. Here is a link: describing exactly what I did to build the cross compiler and set everything up. I also detail in that post, how I attempted to get AppKit (GUI) to work. I failed, it may work in the future, it doesn't fully work yet.
So far it's great. I use a common codebase to write iPhone App (game client) and FreeBSD Game Server; after my server compiles I even have a target rsync the files to my dev box.
One more note, you mention DB, I'm successfully using mysqlclient libraries within my App and my post details how to do that. Since you're building a cross-compiler with The Cocotron you can use any library. Just install the library on FreeBSD first, then create the platform as described.
Sounds like your trying to shoehorn tools onto OS and hardware they were not designed for. There are hacks to get almost anything running on top of anything else but why ask for all the grief?
The entire point of the entire Apple API is that you have integration from hardware to OS to development tools. You supposed to pay more up front in return for greater robustness and lower over all lifecycle cost. (It doesn't always work just like Linux doesn't always save money and Windows doesn't always provide the software choices you need but that is the design goal.) When you break Apple's hardware-OS-Dev trinity you have to start fighting the API and the hardware instead of letting it work for you.
I don't think what you're doing will work and even if it does it will cost a lot of time and in the end time is money. Unless your being forced by external circumstances beyond your control to use this configuration, I would strongly suggest you do whatever it takes to find another way to accomplish what you want.
You won't get binary compatibility. Mac OS X uses the Mach-O object format and FreeBSD uses ELF, like linux. Cocoa won't work on platforms other than Mac OS, but if you stick to POSIX and open-source libraries though, you shouldn't have too much trouble building your CGI (and any dependencies) on your FreeBSD machine.
Also, Cocoa for a website? It's the Mac OS standard library for GUIs, associated datastructures, and various helpers. Apple used to promote something called WebObjects which was similar to Cocoa for the web, but I haven't heard anything about it in ages. I don't think Cocoa will work for a website, unless you just mean write a custom web server that has a graphical front-end in Cocoa.
Why can't Xcode be hacked to be able to run on Windows?
Does Xcode have another programming methods?
Also, I heard that iPhone apps are made with Objective-C, so why is this not available in Windows?
Thanks
Xcode is written in Objective-C and takes advantage of a number of OS X frameworks, so porting it to Windows would require porting all the frameworks on which Xcode relies. Furthermore, Xcode also uses a number of programming tools that would have to be ported to Windows as well (some of them already are, of course).
There are several reasons that Objective-C isn't readily available on Windows:
Most development of Objective-C frameworks takes place on OS X, and a lot of the frameworks aren't open-source and thus can't be ported to Windows (they'd have to be rewritten).
There are some open-source frameworks that could be used on Windows -- for example, OS X's AppKit and Foundation frameworks are (mostly) available as part of the GNUstep project -- but these frameworks aren't widely used or supported on Windows, and sometimes lack capabilities found in their OS X counterparts.
That said, GCC is available on Windows, and since GCC is an Objective-C compiler, you could compile Objective-C code on Windows if you had the right libraries available (or didn't use any third-party libraries). But Objective-C isn't terribly useful without supporting frameworks, and those are rare or nonexistent on Windows.
Same can be said why isn't there Visual Studio 2008 for OSX.
Xcode is a big application written to set of APIs not present on Windows. Porting it would be an enormous job, maintaining it would be a big job, and there are already popular IDEs on the Windows platform.
The same reason you can't install Mac OS X on your PC: Apple chooses to make it available only to people who own their own brand of computers.
I guess that porting XCode would be close to very hard (if not impossible) but even if you were able to have a running XCode version under Windows, I guess that it won’t do what you really want it to do. I assume you want a complete iPhone SDK environment which is reliant on XCode and Interface Builder in a very tight way. That’d require the port of Cocoa Frameworks (among other things) that would be, now for real, impossible to port.
Truth is, as much as you will surely need Windows for Windows Phone development, you need a Macintosh computer for iPhone development.
On the other hand, Xcode as an IDE, is not the best in the world, so even if you managed to get Xcode and make it use, .NET (for example), I’d much rather use visual studio for that.
Actually you can install Mac OS X on any Intel CPU based machine. It is legal as you own the orginal install DVD for the OS X system. After aquiring a copy of Virtualbox or VMWare (either is great, personally I prefer Virtualbox because the display settings are more customizable). Virtualbox allows setup on initial setup while VMWare requires an extra step to ensure compatibility. You can then find the steps online to setup a virtual copy of MacOS X.
After going through the steps to install the OS in the Virtual Machine, you can then go through the process to find XCode in the Apple App Store. From there, have at it. Start programming in XCode and have a good time. Since XCode has its own device emulator you have a built in platform for iOS testing. There may be times where it is a bit buggy but that is to be expected with ANY emulator for ANY system you run.
After you get everything installed and going, sit back and enjoy the programming ride. The only catch is if you want to post anything on the Apple App store and then you will have to deal with getting an Apple Dev License. Objective C can be a bit difficult at times but, at the same time, it can be very satisfying when you solve those programming problems (as with any programming language right ;-) )
Enjoy
PS... this VM install keeps up with all updates from the Apple App Store so keeping the system updated won't be a problem.
PSS... I will not condone anyone for where their source of software is but do keep in mind, setting up a VM with VMWare or Virtualbox and an install DVD is only legal IF you personally OWN the install DVD you created the install image from yourself!
I'm starting to learn Objective-C and I don't have a Mac (and I don't have plans to get one), but as I see that Cocoa is a very good framework to develop in Objective-C, I want to know: Is it possible to develop using Cocoa in Windows and Linux?
Thanks.
I think that your best bet, if you want to use Cocoa, is to get a Mac. You really won't regret it. GNUstep is a neat solution, but it is impractical to distribute applications built using GNUstep, because (as far as I know), clients must have the runtime installed for it to work.
Cocotron is an amazing project as well, and in the future, it may be useful for you if you want simple apps to run on both Mac OS and Windows. But you would still need a Mac to use it.
If you are interested in using a language like Objective-C with a framework like Cocoa, but don't want to get a Mac, why don't you try web application development with Cappuccino and Objective-J?. Objective-J is an implementation of an Objcective-C-like language in JavaScript, and Cappuccino is a really amazing imitation of the Cocoa framework in Objective-J.
Some examples of what can be created using that framework are 280 Slides and the new, stunningly beautiful EnStore. That's not a perfect solution, and unless you are content to just do web applications, you should buy a Mac.
Take a look at Cocotron
The purpose of the project is to provide an easy to use cross-platform solution for Objective-C development. In particular, source code level compatibility with recent versions of Apple's frameworks (OS X 10.4 and 10.5).
The general goal is to provide complete support on any viable platform, the project is intended to be as portable as possible. However, most of the work at this time is focused on providing support for Microsoft Windows. In particular the NT based versions, 2000 up to Vista.
You can also run Snow leopard Server inside a virtual machine, like VMWare Fusion.
Apple changed it licence in 2008 to allow that, but only with server editions. I have personally used it with some success to deploy iphone applications (Although it was admitably a bit slow).
You will need decent hardware and preferably a dedicated hard-disk drive to be able to use it properly.
And considering the cost of vmware and osx server you might be better off buying a used mac.
Is there an IDE that I can load on a Blackberry, E71, or an iPhone?
Apple released iPhone SDK for XCode a while back, check out developer.apple.com and Nokia also release their own SDK check out forum.nokia.com
But for pure Java Midlet goodness, i would recommend Netbeans (netbeans.org) their netbeans mobile application editor is a gem, second to none.
To answer your question, i don't think any phone is powerful enough to compile and test the code on themselves, so no ...
Not that I know of, typically you'll develop apps on a desktop machine (PC/MAC whatever) and download/control the application on the phone. Also I don't think Java is available on a standard (non-cracked) iPhone.
There was a palm based C compiler. I had some trouble finding it though, but it's called OnBoard-C. It didn't exactly have an IDE, it compiled notes. Considering there's a lack of embedded compilers, I'd be surprised to find full embedded IDEs. Oh... I recall there being a Scheme or Lisp too.
This maybe premature but, congrats, you just found a market niche.