Playing With Xcode
- July 09, 2003
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I’ve been fiddling around with Xcode today. I’m still trying to decide whether I like it or not. There are little things here and there that I like, but I still haven’t used it enough to make a final judgment. I’m just a hobby programmer, so things I may find nice or horrible may be the exact opposite for serious coders.
Xcode basically looks like Project Builder, but with some extra cosmetics and panels (which is one thing I’m trying to figure out if I like or not). One of the nice new mini-features that I like is that during the build process, warnings and errors are more informative. In the left-side panel, there’s a new option called Errors and Warnings. Whatever files contain errors or warnings get listed here. If you click on the file, a list of all errors and warnings for that file are given telling you the message and location. On top of that, little icons appear on the lines of your file that correspond to the errors and warnings. You can see what I mean with this picture.
The left-side panel has been redone. Things are a little more organized than before. Well… I guess that depends on how you organize your files. I’d imagine it’s a little more cluttered to some. There’s a new SmartGroup option, kind of like iTunes SmartLists. It allows you to create a dynamic group based on either simple filters or regular expressions. I like this, a lot.
A nice edition to the panel is the Project Symbols option. When selected, it lists all classes, methods and variables for all files in your project. It’s a quick and easy way to find just about anything you might want in your project.
The debug window has been improved, in my opinion. The interface seems a little more intuitive than before.
Interface Builder doesn’t look that different. Of course, I have only dabbled with it for a little bit. I noticed there are some new palettes though. One is WebKit, which only includes are custom view using the Apple WebKit. So I wonder how long it will be before someone makes a better Safari? The other new palette is called BinderPalette. It includes three objects, NSUserDefaultsController, NSObjectController and NSArrayController. I haven’t messed with these, so I can’t tell you exactly what they do. Here’s a picture of the new Bindings option in the Inspector Window.
I can’t tell you about anything else, since I haven’t spent that much time with all of it yet. So far though, I think I like it better than PB.