Should I use Xcode 4? How to get started? Aproach it?

Question

I have been struggling with Xcode 3, and decided to jump directly to Xcode 4.

However, a big problem is that there is very little support like articles, videos, and projects I can use as templates.

Does there exist support like this at all? Can I use Xcode 3 projects as templates? Would it be easy to work from Xcode 3 tutorials?

I have now been using it for one day. Some things in the interface designer are quite different. For example, I can't get to subviews in the tab bar control (but mostly I manage, and can follow examples). Thanks.

Answer 1

I'm doing the same thing. Xcode 4 is in pre-release, so there's not much in the way of tutorials while the tools are in a semi-NDA limbo and could be changed significantly before final release.

I highly recommend reading tutorials (I'm working my way through Aaron Hillegass' books on iPhone and OSX development) that use Xcode 3, and allowing extra time for learning where to map across to the new version.

Xcode 4 is much better organised, so it can be annoying but not impossible to find what you are looking for fairly quickly.

Resources you should go to first: WWDC10 sessions 307, 308 and 315: Introducing Xcode 4, Developing your app with Xcode 4, and Using Interface Builder in Xcode 4.

Access these through the developer portal. They are the definitive Apple guide to the new design and workflow.

In the Xcode 4 Help menu, the Xcode 4 Transition guide is the second choice. I skimmed it, then kept coming back to dive into topics when they came up.

Answer 2

Xcode 4, despite being "released", is an absolute disaster. I would wait for at least a couple of updates (beyond 4.01) before moving to it.

Basic functionality is severely broken. Breakpoints, syntax highlighting, basic functionality in the Interface Builder IU... I don't even know where to begin.

The document management, which was the towering defect of Xcode's design up to this point, has been changed but sadly not fixed. It might even be worse.

At first I had some good impressions. Early notes:

More-sensible defaults for debugging hotkeys.

There's now "Close project" in the File menu!

You can finally set up sounds for lots of build & search events, with a GUI. Nice.

There's a drop-down that shows files that are associated with the one you're editing. This might be useful, but any convenience this might add is ruined by the fact that there's no quick "counterpart" button like there used to be. You have to dig through a menu to go from header to source or vice versa.

Tabs are upside down, extending off the toolbar (WTF). Also, the "X" to close indicator is missing from each tab unless you roll over the tab. This kind of Easter-egg UI hides information from the user and should be abolished.

The tabs don't work well for a couple of reasons. First, there can be two editing panes under one tab with different documents; the tab only shows the name of one of them. You also can't move documents between panes, which you often want to do when referring to different objects and interfaces. Visual Studio solves both of those problems easily by having separate tab groups above each editing pane and letting you drag documents between the two groups.

A second editing pane is always referred to (and indicated in the toolbar) as an "Assistant" editor even if you didn't invoke the assistant (which is bafflingly denoted by a Batman icon button).

View options are under View, where they belong, instead of being incorrectly placed under the Window menu.

If you're typing a call to a function and you're using another function call as a parameter, Xcode's auto-completion appears to automatically prefer functions whose return type matches the parameter you're filling out. EXCELLENT.

But there are bugs aplenty. So many that it's very hard to get work done at times.

One particularly infuriating bug is Xcode's failure to indicate when and where it has stopped at a breakpoint. In many instances, it will stop and pull up the source file, but there's no execution point highlighted. The editor just shows the top of the file, and nothing happens as you step through. The current line is not highlighted, and nowhere does Xcode say, "Stopped at breakpoint." It just says "running."

There's no way to sort files your files in the treeview. NONE. Xcode 3 was bad enough in not sorting them automatically, making you go and sort them over and over and over through the life of a project. Now that's not even an option. WTF?

Xcode leaves your editor window littered with error highlights and messages even after you've fixed the code and recompiled. It turns out that these errors apply to a different target, even though you never built that target and the code they're complaining about doesn't exist anymore.

Xcode will overwrite your syntax-highlighting choices for specific symbol types. You can change them again and again, and Xcode will overwrite your settings inexplicably. You can watch it happen.

THERE'S NO "BUILD" BUTTON IN THE TOOLBAR, AND YOU CAN'T ADD ONE. In fact, the toolbar is not customizable at all, and there's only a "Run" button. What if you don't want to run? Yep, you have to look up the hotkey.

What did they do with all the extra space in the toolbar? Made the project-config dropdown NARROWER. It's so small that it can't show you WTF you're working on. Meanwhile, there's a vast strip of empty space right next to it. Unbelievable.

The Xcode team tried to clean up the mess that was project settings, adding the concept of "schemes." It's mostly an improvement, but buggy. But I'm out of time for this update...