What's new in Xcode 9?

-

1. Refactoring in Swift ðŸ”¨

Ahh finally! This is something I was expecting since as long as Swift has been around, and they finally delivered! Gone are the Cmd + Shift + F where you miss out on a few variable rename, or accidentally modify an unrelated one. Gone are the cut + paste + modify to extract methods. We finally have access to those! Although there’s still a long way for Xcode to offer advanced refactoring tools like JetBrains does today, it offers the most common ones like adding code snippets, extracting methods and variables, and global renaming which works with Swift, Objective-C and even Storyboard files. We have to start somewhere right?



2. Smarter Fix its ðŸ˜Œ

Another nice improvement of Xcode are the smarter “Fix its”. Remember the time when you implement UICollectionViewDataSource, CMD + Click on it, and then copy paste the methods that you need from it? Well, with the new Xcode, you can get all of that with a single click!
Other than adding missing protocol requirements, there are “Fix its” for adding missing overrides for abstract methods, adding missing implementation stubs, adding if else statement around an API that is only available in a specific iOS version, and more. This can greatly help your development speed in the long run.



3. Simulator…s! 🔄

🎉🎉! We can now launch multiple simulators, whether iPhones or iPads! I just tried it out, and it looks great. Plus they are fully resizable.



4. Wireless Debugging 📲

Yep, you read right! Wireless testing and debugging for you iOS apps! No need to use this cable anymore. Long have we waited for this day.



5. Source Control ðŸ“‘

Last but not least, Apple added a great Source Control Navigator right inside Xcode. It presents your working copies, details of branches, file changes etc. You can also do actions such as create branches. As a user of Atom and VSCode, I am happy that Xcode decided to follow a similar path of having some sort of Source Control integration into the editor.
Another cool thing is the partnership with Github! It is fully integrated into Xcode and you can now clone repos, checkout a ReadMe, add stars and more.





Comments

Post a Comment

Popular posts from this blog

Swift: UserDefaults protocol

-
Swift 3 brought a tsunami of changes to the language as well as our codebase, some of you reading this may even still be battling with the migration too. But even with all these changes, we’re still left with some APIs within Foundation that are  stringly typed , which is totally fine… Until it’s not. It’s kind of a love/hate relationship in that we love the flexability that strings within APIs afford us, but we hate that we have to use them because of the inherit consequences they bring if we’re not careful, they’re pretty much the programming equivalent of running with scissors. We’re given stringly typed APIs because the Foundation framework engineering gods could not predetermine exactly how we intend to use them. So in all their wisdom, power and knowledge, they decided to use strings in some of the APIs because of the unlimited possibilities it creates for us as developers. It’s either that or some type of dark arcane magic. UserDefaults Our topic for today is going...
Read more

Download .dmg file of Xcode

-
You can find the DMGs or XIPs for Xcode and other development tools on  https://developer.apple.com/download/more/  (requires Apple ID to login). You must login to have a valid session before downloading anything below. *(Newest on top. For each minor version (6.3, 5.1, etc.)  only the latest revision is kept  in the list.) Xcode 13 13.2 Beta 13.1 13.0 Xcode 12 12.5.1  (requires a Mac with Apple silicon running macOS Big Sur 11 or later, or an Intel-based Mac running macOS Big Sur 11 or later) (Latest as of 22-Jun-2021) 12.4  (requires a Mac with Apple silicon running macOS Big Sur 11 or later, or an Intel-based Mac running macOS Catalina 10.15.4 or later) 12.3  (requires a Mac with Apple silicon running macOS Big Sur 11 or later, or an Intel-based Mac running macOS Catalina 10.15.4 or later) 12.2 12.1 12.0.1  (Requires macOS 10.15.4 or later) (Latest as of 24-Sept-2020) Xcode 11 11.7  (Latest as of Sept 02 2020) 11.6 11.5 11.4.1  (Re...
Read more

How to setup Xcode Swift Project to use LLVM C APIs

-
Image
What is LLVM? “The LLVM compiler infrastructure project (formerly Low Level Virtual Machine) is a “collection of modular and reusable compiler and toolchain technologies” used to develop compiler front ends and back ends.” —  Wikipedia This is what Wikipedia says about LLVM. What does it mean? In order to understand this, you should know very high-level picture of what is happening during compilation of Swift or any other programming language. Compilation Phases LLVM reduces the effort to make a compiler lot easier by abstracting optimization, code generation etc. LLVM Intermediate Representation (LLVM IR) is the one which makes it popular. LLVM IR is a machine independent representation which can be later converted to instruction for targeted architecture like x86, arm etc. Many popular programming languages like Swift, Objective-C, Haskell, Rust, Julia uses LLVM under the hood. Refer this video for more information related to LLVM Why should I use LLVM ...
Read more