IPhone Development

Requirements

To develop in Eiffel for the iPhone, you need:

• a Mac running Mac OS X 10.5.7
• the latest iPhone SDK 3.0 and the latest Xcode
• the official EiffelStudio 6.4 release for the Mac

Getting ready

The iPhone development requires 2 targets and each target has its own value for the environment variable ISE_PLATFORM:

• iphone-x86: when testing under the iPhone simulator
• iphone-arm: when compiling for the actual iPhone device.

Every piece of C code has to be compiled for both targets. Therefore repeat the compilation instructions below twice, one for each target.

Preparing the delivery

Under $ISE_EIFFEL/studio/spec, replicate the macosx-x86 into iphone-x86 and iphone-arm. Do the same in $ISE_EIFFEL/precomp/spec and $ISE_EIFFEL/studio/config.

Compiling

Then you need to check out the source code. The easiest is to create a directory 65dev, go in this directory and then checkout the source code by doing:

svn co https://svn.eiffel.com/eiffelstudio/trunk/Src .

Then set the environment variable ISE_LIBRARY and EIFFEL_SRC to the 65dev directory above.

The Eiffel C runtime

Set ISE_PLATFORM accordingly and in $EIFFEL_SRC/C, type:

./quick_configure

Once compiled do:

cp config.sh $ISE_EIFFEL/studio/spec/$ISE_PLATFORM/include
cd run-time
cp *.h $ISE_EIFFEL/studio/spec/$ISE_PLATFORM/include/
cp lib* $ISE_EIFFEL/studio/spec/$ISE_PLATFORM/lib/

The Eiffel C libraries

You need to compile some C code. Go in the $ISE_LIBRARY/experimental/library/objc_base/Clib and type

finish_freezing -library

then go in $ISE_LIBRARY/experimental/library/iPhone/Clib and type again

finish_freezing -library

Compiling your first iPhone application

Compile the project in $ISE_LIBRARY/examples/iphone/basic (using the -experiment option). Once done you have a binary called `basic'.

Testing under the iPhone Simulator

For the moment, create a simple iPhone application with Xcode, then compile it for the simulator. Once done, you can type:

cd ~/Library/Application\ Support/iPhone\ Simulator/User/Applications

and find the directory corresponding to the application you just created. Once done go into that directory and into the Application bundle. Delete the binary and create a symbolic link to the application compiled via EiffelStudio in the W_code directory.

Now to test your application, you can simply launch the simulator and start your application from there. The simulator is located at:

/Developer/Platforms/iPhoneSimulator.platform/Developer/Applications

Testing under the iPhone Device

First, you need to create the CECIL archive of your Eiffel iPhone application. To do so, go in either W_code or F_code (I recommend F_code here), and type make cecil. Once you have that, you get an archive file (e.g. libbasic.a).

Create an Xcode project, this time include the CECIL archive and the 2 other C libraries we compiled above as external references. Once done, edit `main.m' so its content look like:

#include "eif_eiffel.h"
#include "eif_setup.h"
 
int main(int argc, char *argv[], char **envp) {
	EIF_INITIALIZE(failure);
 
	EIF_PROCEDURE proc;
	EIF_OBJECT obj;
	EIF_TYPE_ID tid;
	tid = eif_type_id ("APPLICATION");
	obj = eif_create(tid);
	proc = eif_procedure ("make", tid);
	(proc) (eif_access(obj));
 
	EIF_DISPOSE_ALL;
}

Compile and deploy to the iPhone and the Eiffel application will be running on your iPhone.