Chapter 4. Compilation: The Basics

Before continuing, let’s review how computer programs get made. If you’re coming to Xcode from long experience with GNU Make or another development environment, this discussion will be extremely familiar to you.

Programmers use source code to specify what a program does; source code files contain a notation that, although technical and sometimes cryptic, is recognizably the product of a human, intended in part for humans to read and understand. Even the most precise human communication leaves to allusion and implication things that a computer has to have spelled out. When the Linrg tool refers to the local variable slope, for example we cared only that the name slope should consistently refer to the result of ...

Get Step into Xcode Mac OS X Development now with the O’Reilly learning platform.

O’Reilly members experience books, live events, courses curated by job role, and more from O’Reilly and nearly 200 top publishers.