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openframeworks – Xcode setup guide
Step 1 – Install Xcode
Step 2 – Using openFrameworks
Notes: Warnings and Errors
Notes: Run Log
Notes: Location of your app
Xcode Quirks: Spaces in main project folder name
Xcode Quirks: Adding files to project
Step 1: Download and install Xcode 2.4.1 or higher
Xcode is Apple’s free gcc based IDE for OS X. You can download it from the Apple Developer Center, though you have to be registered as an apple developer. Registration is free and relatively painless.
Once you are logged in, click on the link to the download section.
Select the link in the downloads for Developer Tools
Download the latest version of Xcode
Once the 900MB download completes, mount the installer and run the XcodeTools package. Click through the installer till you see the customize option. Click it. This gives you the option to skip certain parts of the install. If you are short on disk space you’ll probably want to skip the 1.3GB of developer documentation.
The installer starts installing.
The Developer Tools installer will have installed a folder called Developer in the root (highest level) of you hardrive. The Xcode application is located at /Developer/Applications/Xcode.app.
Now that Xcode has been successfully installed on your computer it is time to check out the openFrameworks examples.
Step 2: Using openFrameworks
Download the openFrameworks examples from the download section of this website. Once downloaded and unzipped place the folder in an appropriate location on your hardrive. Unzipped the contents of the folder should look something like this.
The examples are located within the “app” folder. Within each example folder is the Xcode project file “openFrameworks.xcodeproj”. This file will open the Xcode project for that example.
When the example opens in Xcode you will see a list of files in the left column and the content of the currently selected file (in this case “testApp.cpp”) in the right panel.
The first thing you will probably want to do is to compile and run the app to make sure it works. Along the top of the Xcode window you should see a button called “Build and Go” this button will compile the example app and as long as there are no errors it should then launch the app sucessfuly. If you get a ton of errors on the first compile – try going to the Build menu and selecting “Clean All Targets” – then try again to compile.
Once the app is running – you can terminate it by hitting the “Esc” key on your keyboard.
Notes: Warnings and Errors
While the app is compiling you’ll notice a little circular progress meter on the bottom right corner of the Xcode window. This indicates the percentage of the files compiled.
The yellow triangle and the number next to it indicates the number of warning messages from the compiler. Most of the time you can ignore the warning messages but if you would like to read them click on the triangle and Xcode will open a seperate window which will show them as a list.
If the compiler finds errors in your code or is just generally unhappy about something the compile will fail and you will see something like this in the bottom right hand corner of your Xcode window.
As with the warning messages, to view the errors click on the red circle and Xcode will bring up a new window where it will list the errors and attempt to highlight the line in the code where the errors occured.
Bear in mind that the error message might not always make sense to you but most of the time just showing you where the error is will be enough for you to realise your mistake.
In the code above, by looking at the highlighted line it is quite easy to see that I forgot to put a coma between “frabk.tff” (the font name I wanted to load) and 32 (the size I wanted to font to be).
If I put the coma back in both errors go away and the app compiles and launches nicely.
Notes: Run Log
When the Xcode project launches the app it has another window running behind it called the “Run Log”. This is a console that will give you feedback about your app while it is running.
When the app launches the first thing that is printed to the Run Log is
[Session started at 2007-02-25 15:34:07 +0100.]
When the app exits it will print something like this
openFrameworks has exited with status 0.
The useful thing about the Run Log is that you can print out to it while your app is running with the standard C command “printf” . Also if there are openFrameworks related messages or errors they will be printed here as well.
Notes: Location of your app
The application that you are compiling and running with Xcode is called openFrameworks.app and it is located in the “build/Debug/” folder of each project directory. You can always run the application directly by double clicking it. Everything will be the same as when you launch it with Xcode except you won’t see the Run Log output.
It will give linking errors that it can’t find certain libraries in the libs folder.
As a rule for all files in your main openFrameworks folder and its sub-folders make sure you choose “relative to project”.If you select absolute path then everytime you move your openFrameworks folder around or onto another computer Xcode will freak out because your files will have been listed with paths that don’t exist anymore.
For example a path like: “/User/yourname/Documents/openFrameworksProjects” means that the Xcode project will only work if the openFrameworks folder is in that specific place. Obviously this is not a good thing.
The default path it will give you is usually an absolute one so make sure you change it to “relative to project” before you click add.
The only files that should have absolute paths are the System Frameworks which you will most likely not need to add.