Frameworks

While I was busy writing Tetris (for Mac using Cocoa of course), I was also wondering how I could create a simple framework of my generic classes I wrote for the Game of Life.

In the Apple documentation they are referring to 2 types of frameworks, public ones and private ones.
The public ones you find in /System/Library/Frameworks and /Library/Frameworks.
Now for me, its not a good idea to put my frameworks in a public place, so thats why I opt to create a private framework in my own location (later on its a bit more difficult to use it , but at least I have full control over it).

The first thing we have to do is to startup XCode , and select File>New Project. In the popup that follows you select 'Cocoa Framework'

And click the 'next' button, you now get the opportunity to give a name to your framework.

In a next step, you'll add files, debug them etc etc (the usual development so to speak).
At some time you'll be ready for releasing the framework you made.

Of course , if you want to use your framework in other development projects you need to 'publish' your .h files (your header files).

And this you do in the project browser :



As you notice in the picture, you select in the project explorer 'Targets/name of your framework/Copy headers' . On the right handside you see all your .h files.
The second column says 'Role', now file by file you can change the role (you do this by clicking on the small triangle, you then get a popup with 3 choices).

Its important to change the ones you want to be public , by default they are all 'project'.

A last step is to build the framework and save it some where. A good convention is to save all your frameworks in a location called 'frameworks' (just like Apple does).
Changing the location you do in the project settings (XCode>Project>Edit Project Settings).



And now you build it and voila you have a framework.