Using Delphi XE2 we can export sources into xcode and compile them with free pascal compiller. But all examples i'v ever seen dont modify .pas files in xcode, just export and run.
I wonder if I could add any delphi units or libraries into Objective C application and compile them together? How to include .pas unit into .xcodeproj?
I wish to port delphi application to iOS, exporting all project is impossible, it seems a good idea to make a GUI for iOS in native ObjectiveC and import logic and methods from delphi units. Is it possible?
Since Delphi XE2 is using the Free Pascal Compiler when targeting iOS, you can use any programming technique of FPC.
In fact, if you do not need FireMonkey, and prefer using native User Interface, you do not need Delphi XE2 at all!
You can use the free FPC to compile your application from XCode.
The best reference web site is http://web.me.com/macpgmr/ObjP
In particular, "Developing with Objective Pascal" articles is exactly what you are looking for:
Develop the UI within XCode;
Use FPC to code your business logic in Pascal;
For both Max OSX and iOS.
See just the introduction page, and I suspect you'll be amazed, like I was.
From my POV, the "Object Pascal" paradigm used with FPC (i.e. object pascal "dialect", which can coexist with the default object pascal code) is more advanced, lightweight and integrated than the interface-based "plumbing" of Delphi XE2 compiler (with on-the-fly marshalling using RTTI). This is perhaps a matter of taste...
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I've read the documentation on .NET programming in C++/CLI, and understand at a high level that it can compile C or C++ to .NET MSIL. I also understand that native structures are translated in the process.
The question is, can I compile a C/C++ codebase into a .NET Portable Class Library using C++/CLI? The intention is to use the result across various platforms, e.g. the Xamarin platforms and UWP.
Edit: Is it easier to do this for plain C, rather than C++?
Short answer: AFAIK no.
Long answer:
As far as I know the C++/CLI source code is compiled in "mixed" mode. It means that if you learn C++/CLI language and create managed classes with it, they run in .NET natively. That's good. But if you simply take your existing C++ code and compile it, the result is the native x86/Windows code, which cannot be used on other platforms. It is called "mixed" because the compiler puts native and .NET IL code together to single executable file.
C++/CLI is usually used in situations where you want to use the existing C++ code
as a part of .NET program in Windows. So you create a library in C++/CLI and create an interface for it in managed C++/CLI. This managed C++/CLI interface is a bridge between native C++ code and the rest of your program in .NET.
Also, as far as I know, C++/CLI is generally not supported by CoreCLR.
This question pops up quite often here, even if just implicitly when users mistag their iOS questions. So, what’s the difference between Xcode, Objective-C and Cocoa?
Objective-C is a programming language. It could be said that it’s just a description of what valid Objective-C programs look like and what they mean. If you have a source code listing written in Objective-C, you need an interpreter or a compiler to put the listing to work. Languages like Objective-C are usually compiled, so most people use a compiler (like LLVM). Objective-C is almost exclusively used to develop for iOS and OS X, but there are other uses, too – as an example, some people write Objective-C for Linux.
You can use a text editor to write the sources and a compiler to turn them into an actual programs, but with modern technologies there’s much more to take care of, so that there is another program to make your job easier. These are called Integrated Development Environments, or IDEs. An IDE offers you a convenient way to edit the sources, compile them, debug the resulting programs, read the documentation, and many other things. Xcode is one such IDE. An important observation here is that Xcode does not compile your sources itself, it just calls the standalone compiler (LLVM). And Xcode is not the only IDE you can use to develop Objective-C apps – there’s AppCode, for example.
Writing iOS or OS X apps from scratch each time would be very time-consuming. That’s why Apple provides the developers with a good set of libraries. The libraries are simply a huge amount of source code written by Apple, and this source code takes care of most things that apps have in common. These libraries are called Cocoa.
Now, if you can’t figure out how to extend a class, you are most probably talking about Objective-C. It doesn’t have anything to do with Xcode or Cocoa, you could be very well writing some GNUstep code for Linux using Vim as an IDE and GCC as a compiler. On the other hand, if your Xcode build process fails because of some mysterious setting, or if you’re trying to build a static library in Xcode, that’s clearly an Xcode issue. And if you can’t figure out how to use some NSObject facility or the NSFileManager class, that’s Cocoa. (But it doesn’t have to be Xcode-related, as you could use AppCode or TextMate as your IDE!)
Originally available on my blog. Feel free to link to the blog post or this question when retagging or explaining the difference.
Xcode is the integrated development environment (IDE)—the application—that developers use to write software for iOS and/or OS X. It includes the editor, the build system (determining what to build to produce the desired target), and quite a few other things.
Objective-C is the main language that developers write such software in. They may write bits of it in pure C, use C++ or combine it with Objective-C (producing Objective-C++), or write some or all of the program in another language entirely, such as MacRuby, Java (with j2objc), or C# (with MonoTouch).
Xcode includes the Clang compiler, which turns code written in Objective-C, C, and a few other languages into executable code. Most error messages come from Clang, and Xcode relies heavily on it for search indexing, syntax highlighting, and name completion of Objective-C code.
Cocoa and Cocoa Touch are application frameworks. Each one is a suite of many individual frameworks (libraries stored in folders named blahblah.framework), such as:
Foundation (both): General object-oriented utilities, including NSString, NSURL, NSFileManager, etc.
Core Foundation (both): Mostly the same thing, but different, mainly in having a C-based API rather than Objective-C
Application Kit (Mac): Application and windowing framework
UIKit (iOS): Application and windowing framework
Core Graphics (both): Drawing
Core Animation (both): Sprite-management and animation framework
(and many, many more where they came from, especially on the Mac)
So:
You can use a framework besides Cocoa or Cocoa Touch, but you'll have to have some Cocoa/Cocoa Touch code, at some level, in order for your application to talk to the system, receive events, draw, etc. Frameworks that specifically target Mac and/or iOS will include the relevant wrappers for you, at varying levels of quality.
You can use a language besides Objective-C, but you'll have lots of syntactic awkwardness, as most of Cocoa and Cocoa Touch are designed for Objective-C's unique syntactic features (particularly selectors).
You can use an editor besides Xcode, and you can even use a build system besides Xcode (such as make), but Apple's App Stores expect apps built a particular way (especially with regard to code signing), so unless you're not targeting the App Stores, any other build system has to replicate what Xcode does or risk its users getting rejections.
A clear mistake is failing to differentiate Xcode from everything else. Xcode is the tool you are using to program in - to edit code, run code, etc. So if you are having trouble with the tool (e.g., the window doesn't show you your code properly, or you're having trouble drawing your interface, etc.), that's an Xcode problem.
If you don't understand why your code doesn't work, you're probably having an Objective-C problem or a Cocoa problem. But you won't necessarily know which.
It's an Objective-C problem if the root of your trouble is that you don't know how the language works (e.g. you don't know what the asterisk is for, or that declaration is not instantiation, or that messages to nil do not error out but don't do anything either).
It's a Cocoa problem if you don't grasp the delegate architecture or how a view controller works.
But my experience of the way people pose questions is that you may be ignorant of which of these you are ignorant of. I don't mean you personally, I mean all of us. This can make it difficult to pose the question properly because you don't know what exactly it is that you don't know — if you did, you'd know it and you probably wouldn't be having a problem (you'd be fixing the problem and on to the next thing).
I'm about to write code for Windows that has somewhat similar functionality to the one existing in already written application for iPhone. I'm thinking of separating common functionality to form a component and compile it to both to iPhone and to Windows. This code is written in Objective C and uses RestKit and Core Data (and probably sqlite). Is compiling it for Windows a viable task? As I understand it GCC could compile Objective C on Windows but I'm unsure about the RestKit and Core Data api availability on Windows. I have seen two names that could be of use: GNUStep and Cocotron but I don't know if they will play well together with RestKit.
Note: I have no idea about iOS development so I might be confusing things. Any help is appreciated.
You will not easily be able to share this functionality between your applications. CoreData uses a custom opaque (not documented) format for the sql store. You would be hard pressed to reverse engineer this.
You will probably save a lot of time by rewriting that part for windows, rather than trying to get it working. There really isn't much iOS code that can be reused under windows, unless you have written pure C or C++.
Having recently read up a on Objective-C it strikes me as a fairly neat language with plenty of cool features.
I have no intention of doing any iPhone development, however I understand that GCC is able to compile Objective-C code and so I wanted to know - Is Objective-C a viable alternative language to C99 for Windows development?
In particular:
Is anyone currently doing Windows development using Objective-C?
Are there any runtime components that would need to be distributed with my applications?
I understand that Objective-C is a superset of C, does this mean that it is possible to use any C-compatible library? (for example the Windows API)
Would I get garbage collection in my applications?
I've found Cocotron and GNUstep which are often mentioned when talking about using Objective-C on other platforms, however as GCC can already be used to compile Objective-C I don't really understand why I would need these.
Are there any other pitfalls or traps I might run in attempting Windows development using Objective-C?
With respect to your first question, I don't know if anyone is seriously doing development on windows with Objective-C, but there may be, though those numbers would probably be less than those doing serious work with a language like whitespace.
Secondly, you would need, at a minimum the objective-c runtime. There are two runtimes, NeXT's (now Apple's) runtime, and the GNU Objective-C runtime. They are not compatible. If you are on a non-NeXT and non-Apple platform, such as windows, you have no choice, GNU runtime only.
Objective-C is a superset of C, and yes you can use the Win32 API if you so desire directly in your objective-c code. As well, you would only get garbage collection if you use a conservative collector, and it ties in with the libraries you're using. In short: No.
What GCC has is support for the objective-c language, and runtime, no standard library. What the GNU objc runtime provides you with in terms of a standard library, is two objects: Object, and NXConstantString class, which is needed to support the #"" syntax. Object is merely a base class. Not very useful, eh? This is why frameworks like Cocotron and GNUstep exist — to give you access to an implementation of OPENSTEP/Cocoa.
Regarding pitfalls or traps, yeah: Your application, even using Cocotron or GNUstep may never be portable to the Mac for instance, or you may get bit by things like typed selectors in the GNU objc runtime, or a plethora of other problems. Let me finish answering this by posing another question: What pitfalls or traps might you run into targeting .NET? I'm sure some if not most of those apply in this case too. Standard pitfalls and traps apply.
I hope this helps.
There is no mature solution yet. If you develop the solution itself, you can do it anyway. But if you're not, it's not the time.
For compiler tools, there is LLVM/Clang which are open-source under BSD license.
The compiler is sponsored by Apple, so it compiles Objective-C completely, and is becoming primary compiler for Apple. So compiler is no problem anymore.
Problem is runtime environment library. Objective-C language is depends it's runtime to execute. The runtime defines all behavior of object system and some more. Runtime environment library is core system and different with framework library like Cocoa or Quartz. in .NET, it's CRE, not .NET framework class library.
Without runtime, program cannot be executed like .NET program executed on Windows without .NET runtime.
For more details, check this conversation:
http://lists.cs.uiuc.edu/pipermail/cfe-dev/2010-January/007593.html
I'm completing a project for the iPhone entirely written in Objective-C. I'd like to port this for Android too.
While the user interface of the iPhone and the Android OS are very different and will need different code, can I some how import the core of my code (ie. the black box that does the thinking) as is to Android as part of some Java code?
I have no familiarity with bridging between Objective-C and Java even though I have written in both.
You got luck! Phil Hassey has recently ported his own game from iPhone to Android within a week and wrote up what he did steps by steps. Here is his journey: http://www.philhassey.com/blog/2010/08/03/porting-galcon-using-the-android-ndk/
You could have a look at Apportable which allows to generate an Android app from an existing Objective-C code base. See this article too.
there is a fork of the gcc that supports objective-c on the android by patching the NDK on
http://code.google.com/p/android-gcc-objc2-0/. But it's considered beta at the moment and i'm not sure if jni/java bridges are already implemented
I have been doing a lot of work on this front — for example by creating my own C++ base framework that does not depend on STL (called Platform Core) and writing the core of the next version of my iOS app with that, so that I can easily port it to Android and whatever else has a C++ compiler and strikes my fancy.
I suggest having a (ick, I can't believe I'm about to say this, but eh), ahem, having a C++ core (there, I said it!) so it can be easily ported.