Compiling in Xcode 4 For OS X 10.4 and 10.5
Compiling in Xcode 4 For OS X 10.4 and 10.5
- Subject: Compiling in Xcode 4 For OS X 10.4 and 10.5
- From: Howard Rodstein <email@hidden>
- Date: Tue, 17 May 2011 18:31:44 -0700
I apologize in advance for the lengthy introduction. I think you need it to understand the motivation for the questions at the end of this post.
My company's program runs on OS X 10.4 or later.
I support a package that allows our users to create C or C++ plug-ins for our main program. Hundreds of people use the package, most of them occasional programmers.
I am trying to add Xcode 4 projects and documentation to the package. I would like to keep things simple for our users and, if possible, allow them to create plug-ins that work on the OS versions that our main program supports. (I'm not concerned about PowerPC.)
I presume that, in the not-too-distant future, Xcode 4 will be the default (shipped on DVD with new machines and included in OS upgrades) and I would like to avoid requiring our users to install Xcode 3.2 if they already have Xcode 4.
I am confused as to whether you can compile a plug-in using Xcode 4 that will reliably run on OS X 10.4 and 10.5, even assuming that you use no API routines added after 10.4.
The "About Xcode and IOS SDK.pdf" file that appears on the Xcode 4 installer DVD says:
"To build your app to work on older OSs, for instance M OS X 10.5 Leopard,
set the project setting Base SDK to "Latest", and set Mac OS X Deployment
Target to "Mac OS X 10.5".
However, on May 13, 2010, Chris Espinosa wrote on the Xcode mailing list:
"Running on 10.4 requires gcc 3.3 or 4.0. gcc 4.2 does not generate code
that runs on 10.4."
and Xcode 4 does not include GCC 4.0.
On March 12, 2011, Joar Wingfors wrote:
"It is true that Xcode 4 doesn't support developing for Mac OS X 10.5 and earlier.
If you need to target 10.5 (and I understand that many of you do) you should
continue to use Xcode 3.2 for that purpose."
These statements seems to contradict the statement in "About Xcode and IOS SDK.pdf".
The "Xcode 4 Transition Guide" mentions nothing about "deployment target" or "OS X 10.4" or "OS X 10.5". I'm unable to find anything on this subject in the "Xcode 4 User Guide" or the "Xcode 4 Release Notes".
Empirically, a very simple C plug-in that I compiled in Xcode 4.0.2 works on OS X 10.4, 10.5 and 10.6. The plug-in was compiled with Deployment Target=10.4, SDK=10.6 and GCC=4.2.
Finally, the questions.
If I set my sample projects up like that and use no post-10.4 API's, will my plug-ins reliably run on 10.4, 10.5 and 10.6?
If not, what combination of settings that will support the widest range of operating system versions without a lot of burden on my occasional-programmer-users.
Thanks.
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