Getting Familiar with Xcode

You will use Xcode for just about everything you need to create and build your application. Xcode is an integrated development environment (IDE) written and supported by Apple, which gives you the best possible tool to develop Macintosh applications. You will use the following components of Xcode for most of the work developing and testing your application:

Source Code Editor. You use Xcode’s text editor to create and edit the Objective-C, C, and C++ source files for your Macintosh application. You can use your own favorite editor (such as Emacs) if you prefer, but Xcode’s editor incorporates context-sensitive help that can assist your development tasks — and a third-party editor might not provide such assistance. As you’ll see later in this chapter, Xcode allows you to customize many of the visual aspects of your code as well.