iPhone Open Application Development

Building and Installing Applications

Now that the tool chain has been installed, the next step is to learn how to use it. There are two essential ways to build an executable: the command line or a makefile.

The examples in this book are simple enough that they can be built using the command line. The tool chain is compliant to standard compiler arguments, and should be familiar if you've ever used gcc in the past. You'll want to make sure /usr/local/bin is in your path before you try to use the cross-compiler.

$ export PATH=$PATH:/usr/local/bin

The anatomy of a typical command line compile is:

$ arm-apple-darwin-gcc -o MyExample MyExample.m -lobjc \
-framework CoreFoundation -framework Foundation

arm-apple-darwin-gcc

The name of the cross-compiler itself. This is located in /usr/local/bin, so be sure you've added it to your path.

-o MyExample

Tells the compiler to output the compiled executable to a file named MyExample.

MyExample.m

The name of the source file(s) being included in the program, separated by spaces. The .m extension tells the compiler that the sources are written in Objective-C.

-lobjc

Tells the compiler to link in the tool chain's Objective-C messaging library, which is needed by all iPhone applications. This library glues C-style function calls to Objective-C messages, among other things.

-framework CoreFoundation -framework Foundation

Two of the base frameworks to be linked into the application. Depending on what components of the operating system are being used in the code, ...