Xcode 4

In Austria we have a saying “Big things throw their shadows way ahead of them”. While the rest of home-staying iPhone … pardon iOS developers has only seen the Stevenote, a couple of lucky attendees where able to get their hands on a pre-BETA version of Xcode. They are still under NDA when it comes to discussing it, but you know how it is with Twitter, it’s not really possible to keep those things under wraps if people are excited and connected.

And also, since these details are now on the internet and thus public domain, wannabe journalists can scrape the few available details together and summarize them for you, my dear reader.

Generally developers love that Xcode 4 appears to be a total refresh, lots of thought is apparently being put in, all the more reason to look forward to it. Attendees of the WWDC got a download link on the Apple Developer Forums, but us regular folk only gets an error message. Some People think it was changed too much (T, T) for comfort, but a revolution is never easy.

But for the most part you find only happy tweets (T) and comments.  Here’s my rundown on the features we have heard about:

• Interface Builder becoming part of Xcode for a combined IDE. T T
  
• There is a new Counterparts View that is really convenient. T
• There is a Code Snippet feature, possibly similar to Dashcode. T T
• LLDB will replace the current GDB debugger. T
• New LLVM compiler. (2x compile speed improvement. up to 25% runtime speed improvement. On iphone up to 60% faster apps!) T
• There will be Tabs. T
• MDI (Multi Document Interface) where you see multiple source files within the same Xcode window. T
• Great GIT Support. Improved Subversion Support, too. T T
• You will be able to choose different skins for the IDE. T
• Revamped project and target settings for choosing build configurations, localizations, deployment target,etc.
  

Installation will takes about one hour (T). Because of the amount of things you can have on screen at the same time, you might want to get a monitor of at least 27″ in size (T).

Several people (T T) mentioned June 21st as possible avilability date of Xcode 4 as preview version. But I’m sure your buddies who made it to WWDC will let you take their Xcode 4 for a spin. 😉

Categories: Tools