Apple Developer Tools
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Aside from their main developer tools Xcode and Interface Builder, Apple Computer also provide a number of other tools that aid software developers in creating applications for the Apple Macintosh platform.
[edit] Applet Launcher
Applet Launcher is a Java tool included in Xcode developer tools that runs local and online Java applets outside of a web browser.
[edit] AU Lab
AU Lab is a developer application for Mac OS X which is used to investigate Audio Units.
[edit] CHUD Tools
The Computer Hardware Understanding Developer Tools (CHUD Tools) are a suite of software programs developed by Apple Computer for software and hardware developers for measuring and optimizing the performance of Macintosh systems running their products under Mac OS X. The CHUD Tools can be installed separately or with Xcode.
CHUD Tools include Shark (a code profiler that also generates advice for code optimization), MONster and PMC Index (tools for working with the internal performance counters), Saturn (another profiler), and command-line simulators for the PowerPC G4 and G5 processors.
[edit] Core Image Fun House
Core Image Fun House is a graphics application included with the Mac OS X Developer tools for testing Core Image image units. These image units are similar to Adobe Photoshop filters, in that they have a specified action, but use parameters to modify that action slightly.
Core Image Fun House is meant to showcase the power of Core Image, a technology introduced in Mac OS X v10.4. It is meant to be able to apply image units to images very quickly, by using the graphics processing unit as the workload for the image units. As such, not all Macintosh computers will support Core Image, such as those with graphics cards that do not support shaders.
It can be found in the /Developer/Applications/Graphics Tools directory when the Developer tools have been installed from the Mac OS X Tiger installation discs.
[edit] CrashReporterPrefs
CrashReporterPrefs is a Mac OS X developer utility by Apple Computer that determines how application crash reports are handled by Crash Reporter.
- Basic: Shows a dialog asking the user what to do.
- Developer: Provides additional debug info and automatically shows the mail to Apple window.
- Server: Runs silent, but keeps all the logs.
One can also change the settings in the Terminal:
defaults write com.apple.CrashReporter DialogType [basic|developer|server]
[edit] FileMerge
FileMerge is a graphical file comparison application included with the Mac OS X Developer Tools. A descendant of NEXTSTEP's Merge utility, it is used to compare and merge different versions of a file. This program offers automatic file merging, but it is most useful as a simple but powerful manual merge tool for text based files. FileMerge expects Unix style newlines and the Mac OS Roman text encoding.
FileMerge can be found in the /Developer/Applications/Utilities directory when the Developer Tools have been installed from the Mac OS X Tiger installation discs, or from the Apple Developer Connection website.
FileMerge can be launched from the terminal with the command opendiff.
[edit] Help Indexer
Help Indexer is a utility that creates an index file for Help Viewer to use. Help Indexer may be run in command line mode as well by invoking /Developer/Applications/Utilities/Help Indexer.app/Contents/MacOS/Help Indexer on the command line with its flags. Help Indexer ignores files listed in its Stopwords.plist file.
[edit] icns Browser
icns Browser is a utility by Apple Computer for viewing all of the resources in an .icns file. It displays the Mini, Small, Large, Huge, Thumbnail & Tile sizes in all available bit-depths and masks for each.
[edit] Icon Composer
Icon Composer is an icon editor that is part of the Apple Developer Tools. It does not have any editing features other than composing Apple Icon Image files. External editors must do all the image manipulation, then the results may be imported into the converter to create the finished icon.
[edit] IORegistryExplorer
IORegistryExplorer (Input Output Registry Explorer) is a developer tool by Apple Computer that allows the user to examine the hardware registry in Mac OS X. The utility has over a dozen view modes for the data: unary, binary, octal, decimal, hexadecimal, ASCII, MacRoman, UTF-8 & Unicode; 8, 16, 32 & 64-bit; and big & little endian.
[edit] Jar Bundler
Jar Bundler, developed by Apple Computer is a Java tool that allows developers to package their program's files into a single double-clickable application. Further, Jar Bundler lets you modify certain properties, making your application run all that much better on Mac OS X. It is included in the Xcode developer suite.
[edit] MallocDebug
MallocDebug, developed by Apple Computer provides assistance for assessing memory usage and detecting memory leaks in programs running on Mac OS X. It is included in the Xcode developer suite.
[edit] Usage
To assess an applications memory usage, create a new window and select the executable file. The user then interacts with the application as they normally would, while MallocDebug builds a memory profile. Selecting “Leaks” from the analysis popup menu will then provide relevant information on where and how much memory your application is leaking.
[edit] OpenGL Shader Builder
OpenGL Shader Builder, developed by Apple Computer provides an integrated environment to develop and debug OpenGL GPU programs (Shaders) under Mac OS X.
[edit] Features
OpenGL Shader Builder supports the following features:
- Realtime entry
- Preview window with shaders applied to a textured plane, sphere or teapot
- Example shaders
- Syntax checking
- Debugging and analysis of vertex / fragment programs.
- Export to Xcode
One notable feature is 'Export to Xcode'. A sample Xcode project is created with C source code to initialize OpenGL (using the GLUT library) and run the shader program.
[edit] PackageMaker
PackageMaker is a Mac OS X application created by Apple Computer. It is part of the Mac OS X developer tools that come free with every copy of the operating system, and can be used to create .pkg installer bundles. These packages can subsequently install files via the Installer application. Software installation configurations can be saved as .pmproj files. The default installation of PackageMaker places it in the path /Developer/Applications/Utilities/PackageMaker.app.
[edit] Pixie
Pixie is a software application on Apple Computer's Mac OS X operating system. It is part of Xcode, the Apple Developer Connection's developer toolset.
Pixie is a magnifying glass application. Its purpose is to magnify a small section of the computer's screen, centered around the mouse cursor. This gives the user a detailed view of the screen, as well as the pixel coordinates of the mouse. Pixie allows several levels of zoom, "locking" the image under the mouse for closer examination, and saving the magnified image in several formats.
Pixie's features are useful for detailed examination of an interface, such as determining if GUI elements are aligned precisely. It can also be used to obtain magnified screenshots.
[edit] Property List Editor
Property List Editor an application included in the Apple Developer Tools for editing plist files. It can be found at /Developer/Applications/Utilities/Property List Editor.app. Property List Editor only edits plist files, not any other XML format.
[edit] Quartz Composer
Quartz Composer is a node based visual programming language provided as part of the Xcode development environment in Mac OS X v10.4 "Tiger" for processing and rendering graphical data.
Quartz Composer uses OpenGL, Core Image, Core Video, and other technologies to build an API and a developer tool around a simple visual programming paradigm. Apple has embedded Quartz Composer deeply into the operating system. Compositions created in Quartz Composer can be played standalone in any QuickTime-aware application (although only on Mac OS X v10.4), from inside the Quartz Composer application or can be embedded into a Cocoa or Carbon application. Because Quartz Composer makes extensive usage of hardware acceleration and pixel shaders, it is recommended to have a recent graphics card with at least 32MB of VRAM.
Quartz Composer has many similarities to Max/MSP although its primary usage is for graphical rather than audio processing. The ability to construct interactive video compositions that react to audio or MIDI signals but which can be played from any QuickTime aware application has caused a great deal of interest in Quartz Composer from VJs.
Pierre-Olivier Latour originally developed the predecessor to Quartz Composer under the name PixelShox Studio.
- Quartz Composer Programming Guide from Apple Computer
[edit] Repeat After Me
Repeat After Me is a tool by Apple Computer designed to adjust the performance of their text-to-speech software. It allows developers to test the operating system's phonemic translation engine, view graphs of the automatically generated tone, graphically adjust the intonation, and record samples for reference.
The audio recording and modelling feature appears to be broken on Intel Macs.
[edit] Script Editor
Script Editor is a program included with the standard installation Mac OS & Mac OS X that allows AppleScripts to be written, debugged and run.
The program can also be used to save scripts as stand-alone applications that can be run without using the Script Editor program.
Other AppleScript and OSA language editors include:
- Smile (software), from Satimage
- Script Debugger, from Late Night Software
[edit] Shark
Shark is a software program developed by Apple Computer and bundled as a tool with Xcode for the Mac OS X operating system. Shark is used by software developers to optimize their software programs on OS X.
[edit] Spin Control
Spin Control is a software program bundled as a performance tool with Xcode for the Mac OS X operating system. Spin Control is used for monitoring hang activity in software programs.
[edit] Thread Viewer
Thread Viewer is a performance tool bundled with Xcode for the Mac OS X operating system which graphically displays activity across a range of threads. It provides color-coded time-line views of thread activity and can display backtraces of activity at specific points in time.
[edit] External links
| Developer Tools |
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Interface Builder · Xcode · others |
