Flavio,
On 28. 3. 2016, at 16:08, Flavio Donadio <[email protected]> wrote:
>> […] I am building my apps in Xcode […]
>
> Could you elaborate on this? Are you telling us you use XCode to do Java
> development? How well does it work?
Short answer: I do (essentially, see below re Java), and it works much better
than Eclipse for me.
Nevertheless, there are _very_ serious drawbacks; if Eclipse works reasonably
well for you, you probably won't want to switch to Xcode. I develop lots of
things for Mac OS X and for iOS, too; this is why I stick with Xcode, for I
prefer having the same source system and editor for all my projects. If you
don't, you would do better with another IDE, better suited to customizations
(AppCode is said to be pretty good, though I haven't tested it myself).
First thing, I still use Xcode 5.1; I did not get to test newer ones yet, it
might work well, it might not. Note that I parted with pure Java long ago;
myself, I consider it a terrible language. Therefore, I use Groovy, which
allows me e.g., instead of this contraption
=== this is what Java forces us to write, business logic lost in heaps of
boilerplate ===
NSArray validOfferItems() {
NSMutableArray ma=null;
if (auction!=null) {
NSArray all=auction.orderedPriceOffers();
if (all!=null) {
ma=new NSMutableArray();
for (Enumeration en=all.objectEnumerator();en.hasMoreElements();) {
DBPriceOffer po=(DBPriceOffer)en.nextElement();
if (po.validOffer()) ma.addObject(po);
}
}
}
return ma;
}
===
to write this code
=== this is what Groovy allows, all business logic, no boilerplate ===
NSArray validOfferItems {
auction.orderedPriceOffers.findAll { it.validOffer }
}
===
Besides, Groovy adds dynamic services which remind one of ObjC (e.g., I do not
need the ugly mess of _EOWhatever superclasses; my enterprise objects install
accessors based on the model automatically at runtime, just like it was
intended to work from the very beginning -- similar way it works today with
Core Data).
Nevertheless, it is not easy to teach Xcode to work with Groovy sources
properly. There is essentially no syntax-based auto-completion (in Eclipse
there is one, but it never worked for me; whenever I tried, it simply shown the
rainbow disc for a couple of minutes and then auto-completed nothing anyway).
Xcode, at least, can reliably auto-complete strings used before in the same
source. I have added my own xctemplate for .wos, too; they can easily be edited
in Xcode's assistant editor, but -- unlike Eclipse -- they will not open this
way automatically, alas.
For building, I use an “external build system” target with my own build script.
Again, if you use Eclipse/Java, you might get better; Eclipse/Groovy was a
disaster though: the incremental build 50 % of time simply did not work,
running some old classes along with some new ones, ick. My scripts work 95 % of
time, and I know precisely what causes the 5 % of problems (outdated .class
files not removed) and can dodge it. One of worst current problems for me is
no typechecking; this can be cured and I know how to make a typechecking system
essentialy same as ObjC's for Groovy (its native one is seriously lacking), but
so far, I did not found the time to do that.
Similarly for testing I use my own run script. There's only one drawback, but
it's pretty serious one: no debugger (I've played with jdb, but did not suceed
to integrate it into Xcode). Again, if Eclipse debugger works all right for
you, you are _much_ better with it; for me (with Groovy) it never worked
reliably, so I lose nothing, am down to log-based-testing anyway.
I don't mind sharing those scripts and tools
(http://www.ocs.cz/CD/ocswobuildxcode.zip), but be VERY wary with them! They
are hand-tuned to my own specific needs (e.g, they hard-code building a shared
code from a separate OCShared project; there's a half-baked not-working support
for the Groovy typechecking, and worse), and very definitely they CANNOT be
used as-are -- at best, you might start with them and prepare your own build
system based on the ideas.
Whilst I do intend to make those scripts generic enough, alas, so far I had no
time for that :(
All the best,
OC
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