Mac OS X Panther in a Nutshell, 2nd Edition

The Developer Folder

After installing the Xcode Tools, a Developer folder is placed at the root level of Mac OS X (/Developer). Inside the Developer folder, you’ll find a host of other folders that contain applications, documentation, sample applications (including their source code), and a suite of command-line utilities for development.

Applications

This folder contains everything a developer needs to build an application for Mac OS X. The two main applications within this folder are Apple’s integrated development environment (IDE), consisting of:

Interface Builder

A tool used to construct the graphical user interfaces (GUIs) for Carbon or Cocoa applications. It’s intended for use alongside Xcode, as described later.

Xcode

Formerly known as Project Builder, Xcode is the central development environment for all Mac OS X applications.

Documentation

This folder holds an immense amount of system documentation in HTML and PDF format, covering the entirety of Mac OS X from a developer’s point of view. Topics range from general descriptions of system functionality to highly specific reference manuals, to the Cocoa and Carbon programming APIs. For more about the documentation the Xcode Tools offer, see Section 15.4.1.

All the documentation found in this folder also exists on the ADC web site, http://developer.apple.com.

Examples

The /Examples folder contains a variety of application project folders, organized by category. Some are .pbproj files and related Aqua interface and localization resources ...