As far as I understand currently with XCode 7.3 and Swift 2.2 there is no elegant way to create a project with C++ and Swift without introducing Objective C
Can I mix Swift with C++? Like the Objective - C .mm files
I remember seeing somewhere that it was a goal of Apple to provide a solution to do away with this requirement.
I have been going through some of the WWDC2016 sessions but have yet to see this mentioned.
Has anyone come across any mention of a change in Xcode or in Swift, which will simplify C++ handling.
I am asking for a link to a session or discussion where this has been discussed.
I am not sure of the scope of any NDA when answering this question but I imagine posting a link will be safe enough
You can see the next changes here.
But I don't think it will ever get easier as importing an ObjectiveC++ package. Since, unlike ObjectiveC++, Swift isn't a superset of C++
Related
I'm building a cross-platform mobile application and I was suggested to use OF environment and compile my application using Xcode. I'm a Mac user and I started programming few time ago (so I'm really a beginner).
I need some class to get information about position and rotation so I was thinking to have a look at some SDK such as MoSync or CMDeviceMotion in order to understand which one is the most suitable to my purpose.
I also noted here:
https://developer.apple.com/library/ios/documentation/CoreMotion/Reference/CMDeviceMotion_Class/index.html#//apple_ref/doc/c_ref/CMDeviceMotion
that CMDeviceMotion is written for Obj-C and Swift.
So I have two question:
is it possible add to the main project libraries that are not part of OF?
should I use only C/C++ class?
Thanks.
I'm not sure if stackoverflow is the right place to ask a q like this, since any answer is very much prone to subjectivity.
I don't think there's a lot of valid reasons to even try to connect "MoSync" with OF, since they are both in a way "platforms" for developing apps, supporting different languages (javascript on the first and c++ on the latter). It is possible to mix objective-c (and swift) code with c++, so you can combine CMDeviceMotion with OF.
However to answer your question: It seems that if you want to have device information you don't need to go out of the scope of openFrameworks. Take a look at the "ofxIOSCoreLocation"class of OpenFrameworks/ofxIOS. It provides means for altitude, location, direction and so forth.
It is very possible to cross Objective-C and C++ with what is called Objective-C++ (by standard .mm instead of cpp), in openFrameworks.
Limitations and features: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Objective-C#Objective-C.2B.2B
You can then from the Objective-C++ class (lets say for example ofApp.h), call Objective C delegates and functions directly.
You can not embed swift like this, however you there are some methods of using objective-c middle man class.
I've been learning C++ and SFML for quite a while now, and love the language and library, as it works well for me. I've gotten interested in making iPhone apps, which I realize uses Objective-C.
Anyway, my question is, is there a way for me to call the use of C++ code (with SFML) in Objective C. So while the program would work on an iPhone, the actual code is written mainly in C++?
Sorry if that's not.... descriptive enough, if you need more clarification, feel free to ask!
Thanks in advance!
Yes. In fact, you would probably use Objective-C++. Name your source files with the ".mm" extension instead of the ".m" extension, and the compiler will compile them as Objective-C++. There's even a Wikipedia article about it. You can also use regular C++ source files in your code and call them from Objective-C classes in this scenario. If you have more specific questions about it, feel free to ask.
I am new to C++ Builder. I am trying out the XE4 version, but it doesn't seem to have autocompletion for include or checking and underlining a bad syntax like for example VS does. So I can put any rubbish and the editor doesn't indicate in any way that you made a mistake in your code. And as for auto completing include: when including headers it doesn't indicate anything if the headers exists. Does any one knows if these 2 features should work in C++ Builder XE4 and you just need to switch them on somewhere or they don't exist in this IDE ?
Thanks
I haven't used C++ Builder XE4 ... but on earlier versions, you could go into Tools > Options > Editor Options > Code Insight.
Q: Does that option exist in XE4? Does it help?
ALSO: http://docwiki.embarcadero.com/RADStudio/XE4/en/Code_Completion
I have the same problems for years now. It's only my personal opinion, but I think this kind of things are broken in C++Builder. The main IDE / programming language is Delphi / Object Pascal. They work and write primary with this one and make all kind of wrappers, etc. for C++ afterwards. In Delphi everything works normally. In C++ autocomplation DOES work, but seldom. Sometimes it pops up and sometimes not. I never managed to get syntax checking to work in realtime. Only after compilation the checking starts... sometimes. There are other things which don't work too, like the Refactoring feature which I use (in Delphi) to find and add missing libraries/headers to the "uses" list. This worked partly in previous C++Builder XE versions but doesn't work at all now. Also, all this features seems to be much slower in C++Builder.
That's sad. I liked the solid functionality in Borland's products, like in C++Builder 6. The documentation system (help) worked there wonderfully too. In Delphi / C++Builder it is slow and incomplete, because it is made with one of the worst documentation systems at all: Microsoft Document Explorer. :-(
When programming in C++ in Visual Studio 2008, why is there no functionality like that seen in the refactor menu when using C#?
I use Rename constantly and you really miss it when it's not there. I'm sure you can get plugins that offer this, but why isn't it integrated in to the IDE when using C++? Is this due to some gotcha in the way that C++ must be parsed?
The syntax and semantics of C++ make it incredibly difficult to correctly implement refactoring functionality. It's possible to implement something relatively simple to cover 90% of the cases, but in the remaining 10% of cases that simple solution will horribly break your code by changing things you never wanted to change.
Read http://yosefk.com/c++fqa/defective.html#defect-8 for a brief discussion of the difficulties that any refactoring code in C++ has to deal with.
Microsoft has evidently decided to punt on this particular feature for C++, leaving it up to third-party developers to do what they can.
I'm not sure why it is like this, but third-party tools exist that help. For example, right now I'm evaluating Visual Assist X (by Whole Tomato). We're also using Visual Studio 2005.
devexpress provides Add-in Refactor! for C++ for VS2005 and VS2008.
Don't feel hard-done-by, it isn't available in VB.Net either :)
C++ is a HARD language to parse compared with C# (VB too unless you've "Option Explicit" and "Option Strict" switched on, it's difficult to tell exactly what any line of code is doing out of a MUCH larger context).
At a guess it could have something to do with the "difficulty" of providing it.
P.S. I marked my answer as community wiki because I know it's not providing any useful information.
Eclipse does few c++ refactorings including 'rename'. Check out this question here on StackOverflow.
It is also possible to use Microsoft compiler with Eclipse. Check out here.
Try Eclipse and see if it fits for you.
There is a lot of fud and confusion around this issue. This amazing youtube video should clear up why C++ refactoring is hard: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=mVbDzTM21BQ
tl;dr Google refactors their entire 100 million line C++ codebase by using a compiler (Clang + LLVM) that allows access to its intermediate format.
Bottom line, third parties are screwed here, there is no realistic way for them to refactor VS C++ unless MS outputs intermediate results the same way. If you think of it from the programming problem perspective this is obvious: in order to refactor VS C++ you have to be able to compile C++ the exact same way VS does with the same bugs, limitations, flaws, hacks, shortcuts, workarounds, etc. The usual suspects like Coderush and Resharper do not have the budget for that kind of insanity although apparently they are trying but it has been years...
http://www.jetbrains.com/resharper-cpp/
Update 2016: Resharper now does a decent job at C++ refactor. Limitations are purely for large / gigantic projects.
MS has finally done this: https://channel9.msdn.com/Shows/C9-GoingNative/GoingNative-33-C-Refactoring-in-Visual-Studio-2015#time=04m37s
They have started doing this about 10 years ago, I remember watching ms channel9 long ago.
I've been using Visual Assist X with visual studio for about one year and a half. It's an incredible tool that helps you a lot with ordinary C++ code, but it doesn't perform very well on templated code. For instance, you if have a sophisticated policy-based template design, it won't know how to rename your variables, and the project won't compile anymore.
Install plugin which enables you that functionality: https://visualstudiogallery.msdn.microsoft.com/164904b2-3b47-417f-9b6b-fdd35757d194
I'd like to point out that Qt Creator (a C++ IDE which is compatible with VC++ libraries and build system) provides symbol renaming that works very well:
You can rename symbols in all files in a project. When you rename a class, you can also change filenames that match the class name.
Qt Creator - Refactoring: Renaming Symbols
Qt Creator's rename functionality gives you a list of the symbol references it found and an opportunity to exclude any of them before performing the replace. So if it gets a symbol reference wrong, you can exclude it.
So C++ symbol renaming is possible. Coming to VS from Qt Creator I feel your pain, to the point where I've considered converting preexisting VS projects of considerable size to use Qt Creator instead.
I don't buy the argument that this is specifically hard in C++. In addition to the fact that it already works very well in Qt Creator, there's the fact that the compiler and linker can find and match symbols: If that wasn't possible you couldn't build your application.
In fact, languages like Python that are dynamically typed also have renaming tools. If you can create such a tool for a language where there are no explicit references to variable type you can definitely do it for C++.
Case in point:
... Rope, a python refactoring library... I tried it for a few renames, and that definitely worked as expected.
Stack Overflow - What refactoring tools do you use for Python?
Well in spite of comments by all you experts I totally disagree that refactoring support issue has something to do with C++ language semantics or any language semantics for that matter. Except the compiler builder themselves don't choose to implement one in first case due to their own reasons or constraints whatsoever they maybe.
And offense not to be taken but I am sorry to say Mr jsb the above link you provided to support your case (i.e of yosefk) about C++ defect is totally out of question. Its more like you providing direction to "Los angeles" when someone asked for of "San Franisco".
In my opinion raising refactoring difficulty issue for certain language is more like raising a finger on language integrity itself. Especially for languages which is sometimes just pain.... when it comes to their variable declaration and use. :) Okay! tell me how come you loose track of some node within a node tree ... eh? So what it is do with any language be it as simple as machine level code. You know you VS compiler can easily detect if some variable or routine is dead code. Got my point?
About developing third party tool. I think compiler vendors can implement it far more easily and effectively if they ever wanted to then a third party tool which will have to duplicate all the parsing database to handle it. Nowadays compiler can optimize code very efficiently at machine code level and I am hearing here that its difficult to tell how some variable is used previously. You haven't paid any real attention to inner working of compiler I suppose. What database it keep within.
And sure its the almost same database that IDE use for all such similar purposes. In previous time compiler were just a separate entity and IDE just a Text Editor with some specialization but as times goes by the gap between compiler and IDE Editor become less and its directly started working on similar parsed database. Which makes it possible to handle all those intellisense and refactoring or other syntax related issues more effectively. With all precompile things and JIT compiling this gap is almost negligent. So it almost make sense to use same database for both purpose or else your memory demand go higher due to duplication.
You all are programmers - I am not! And you guys seems to be having difficulty visualizing how refactoring can be implemented for C++ or any language that I can't comprehend. Its just all about for something you have to put more effort for some less depending on how heavy is a person you trying push.
Anyway way VS a nice IDE especially when it comes to C#.
I'm all for language diversity, but Objective C is insane. So I'm curious: is it possible to code iPhone apps with C++ while using the Cocoa API, etc?
Although Objective-C does indeed appear to be "insane" initially, I encourage you to stick with it. Once you have an "a-ha" moment, suddenly it all starts to make sense. For me it took about 2 weeks of focused Objective-C concentration to really understand the Cocoa frameworks, the language, and how it all fits together. But once I really "got" it, it was very very exciting.
It sounds cliché, but it's true. Stick it out.
Of course, if you're bringing in C++ libraries or existing C++ code, you can use those modules with Objective-C/Objective-C++.
Short answer, yes, sort of. You can use Objective-C++, which you can read about at Apple Developer Connection.
If you know C++ already, learning Objective-C would be pretty simple, if you decided to give that a try. More info on that topic is at the ADC as well.
I use Objective-C to slap the UI together.
But the hard guts of the code is still written in C++.
That is the main purpose of Objective-C the UI interface and handling the events.
And it works great for that purpose.
I still like C++ as the backend for the code though (but that's mainly becuase I like C++) you could quite easily use Objective-C for the backend of the application as well.
First off, saying Objective-C is "insane" is humorous- I have the Bjarne Stroustrup C++ book sitting by my side which clocks in at 1020 pages. Apple's PDF on Objective-C is 141.
If you want to use UIKit it will be very, very difficult for you to do anything in C++. Any serious iPhone app that conforms to Apple's UI will need it's UI portions to be written in Objective-C. Only if you're writing an OpenGL game can you stick almost entirely to C/C++.
Having some experience of this, you can indeed use C++ code for your "core" code, but you have to use objective-C for anything iPhone specific.
Don't try to force Objective-C to act like C++. At first it will seem to you this is possible, but the resulting code really won't work well with Cocoa, and you will get very confused as to what is going on. Take the time to learn properly, without any C++ around, how to build GUIs and iPhone applications, then link in your C++ base.
You have to use Objective C to interface with the Cocoa API, so there is no choice. Of course, you can use as much C++ as you like behind the scenes (Objective C++ makes this easy).
It is an insane language indeed, but it's also... kind of fun to use once you're a bit used to it. :-)
I'm not sure about C++, but you can definitely code iPhone applications in C#, using a product called MonoTouch.
You can see this post for detailed discussion on MonoTouch Vs Obj-C: How to decide between MonoTouch and Objective-C?
I'm in the process of porting a computation-intensive Android app written in Java to iOS6. I'm doing this by porting the non-UI parts from Java to C++, writing the (minimal) UI parts in Obj-C, and wrapping the former in a (small) C interface using the standard C/C++ technique, so that it can be accessed from Obj-C, which is after all a superset of C.
This has been effective so far, and I haven't encountered any gotchas. It seems to be a legitimate approach, since Xcode lets you create C++ classes as well as Obj-C classes, and some of the official sample code does things this way. I haven't had to go outside any officially supported interfaces to do this.
There wouldn't seem to be much to gain from writing my remaining UI code in C++ even if it were possible, in view of the help given to you by the interface builder in Xcode, so my answer would be that you can use C++ for almost all your app, or as much of it as you find appropriate/convenient.
Yes but Thinking that you can program every kind of program in a single language is a flawed idea unless you are writing very simple programs. Objective C is for Cocoa as C# is for .NET, Use the right tool for right job, Trying to make C++ interact to Cocoa via writing bridging code and trying to make C++ code behave according to Cocoa requirements is not a good idea neither expecting C++ performance from Objective C is. You should try to layout design and architecture of app keeping in view existing skills and determine which part should be written in which language then build accordingly.
I'm currently writing an Objective-C++ framework called Objective-X, wich makes PURE C++ iPHONE PROGRAMMING possible. You can do like this:
#import "ObjectiveX.h"
void GUIApplicationMain() {
GUIAlert Alert;
GUILabel Label;
GUIScreen MainScreen;
Alert.set_text(#"Just a lovely alert box!");
Alert.set_title(#"Hello!");
Alert.set_button(#"Okay");
Alert.show();
Label.set_text(#"Ciao!");
Label.set_position(100, 200, 120, 40);
MainScreen.init();
MainScreen.addGUIControl(Label.init());
}
and compile it using GCC's appropriate commandline options. I've already compiled this helloworld app&it w0rkX0rz like a charm. ;-) It'll available soon on GoogleCode. Search for Objective-X or visit http://infotronix.orgfree.com/objectivex approx. a week later!
Updated (but apparently inactive) URL: http://code.google.com/p/objectivex/
It may be a bit offtopic, but anyway. You can program c++ right on iOS devices. Check out CppCode ios app - http://cppcode.info. I believe it helps to learn c and c++ and objective-c later.