Mac OS X in a Nutshell

Chapter 15. Development Tools

As Chapter 3 notes, Mac OS X maker Macintosh software development far easier than ever before. Not only does Mac OS X ship with a large variety of development tools for free, but the tools themselves—especially the integrated development environment applications Project Builder and Interface Builder—are beautiful pieces of work that help even newcomers start writing Mac OS X applications quickly.

This chapter outlines the tools Mac OS X provides for Aqua application development, and touches on the system resources that make Darwin-level development possible.

Getting the Developer Tools

When first installed onto a machine, Mac OS X actually lacks all the development tools mentioned in this chapter (as well crucial BSD-layer development tools such as gcc). You have to take a few extra steps to install them.

The fastest way into the Developer Tools suite simply involves inserting the Mac OS X Developer Tools CD-ROM, which ships with every boxed set of Mac OS X, and double-clicking its installer icon. This installs the whole /Developer hierarchy and various Darwin-side libraries and executables that make software development (or even just compiling programs from downloaded source code) possible.

Tip

If you purchased new hardware, you may not have the Developer Tools CD. Instead, you can install the Developer Tools by double-clicking on Developer.mpkg, found in /Applications/Installers/Developer Tools.

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