Beginning Xcode®

Chapter 19. Customizing Xcode

Apple is famous for developing spare and elegant software solutions. Rare indeed is the Apple application that suffers from "featurosis"—a malady of ever-expanding specialized features that eventually smother an application in an incomprehensible maze of commands and options. But developers are not consumers. Developers are professionals that expect, nay demand, that almost every aspect of the tools they use be under their control; to alter, repurpose, and tweak as they see fit. I have personally worked with a developer who, dissatisfied with the warnings produced by a compiler, downloaded its source code, corrected the perceived flaw, and built his own personalized version to use. Although the wisdom of his actions are debatable, the spirit of "if you don't like the way it works, build your own" runs deep and strong through the developer community.

For this reason, Xcode is a departure from most software produced by the engineering teams at Apple Computer. Xcode has a dizzying array of customizable options, as witnessed by the monstrous Xcode Preferences window. Using the Xcode interface, you can completely customize the keystrokes used to invoke every Xcode command and motion. The extensive set of build settings enable you to specify any of the innumerable switches passed to compilers, linkers, and other tools employed by Xcode. You can completely reorganize the build process, and even assume complete responsibility for it. You are free to use a different ...