Re: Cross-Platform Windows plus Mac

On 2007-10-26 08:12:27 -0700, Michael Ash <mike@[EMAIL PROTECTED]
> said:

> It's easy enough to transform them into XML plists using plutil, but
this
> does add an extra step.

Don't do that, it will be good for neither you nor your project.

A significant amount of effort was put into making the Xcode project 
file format diffable and mergeable by humans for Xcode 2.1.  For 
example, elements have comments next to them describing exactly what 
they are, so you don't have to refer to their section and follow the 
chains implied by references to their unique IDs.  Everything is also 
written in a stable order so as to minimize revision control diffs when 
you're not actually changing a project's structure, and structural 
elements are written one to a line as well for easy merging.

Thus you can easily see that a file reference within a group refers to 
MyApplication_Prefix.pch, or (and this is the im****tant part!) that a 
conflict occurred because two developers were both trying to add a file 
to the end of the Compile Sources or Copy Headers build phase in a 
target.  But if both you and a coworker edit different build settings 
in the same configuration of a target, you won't get a conflict.  Etc.

Yes, there are a lot of scary-looking hex numbers in there.  They are 
unique IDs, nothing else.  There's no information hidden in them, 
they're just used to reference an object elsewhere in the file.  And 
all of the objects should be in a section whose comments make it at 
least somewhat clear what its role in the project is.

Few people are likely to be generating Xcode projects by hand any time 
soon, but they're not really that opaque.

  -- Chris