Chapter 5. Compilation

In This Chapter

• Exploring what happens when you build

• Understanding the task of compilation

• Understanding linkage and symbols

• Understanding dynamic linkage

Before continuing, let’s review how computer programs are made. If you come to Xcode from long experience with GNU Make or another development environment, this discussion will be 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. Even the most precise human communication leaves to allusion and implication things that a computer needs spelled out. If a passer-rating tool were ...

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