Mac OS® X Advanced Development Techniques

6. Frameworks

“You don't know what I know!”

—said the Framework to the Application

Frameworks provide a convenient way to distribute a library along with headers, documentation, and other resources. Frameworks are most analogous to libraries in C. If you're a C programmer, you have undoubtedly created or used a library. You might not have known it, but you have.

You might be familiar with libraries that come with a .lib file (the library itself) and a separate .h file (the header, or interface, file). The library file contains all the compiled source code to perform certain tasks, whereas the header file defines the interface to that code. By adding the library to your project and including the header file in your source files, you can access ...