How did Apple Maker Project and Interface builders?

Posted:
in macOS edited January 2014
How did Apple make the Project and Interface builders if Application are made from those. Did they write one piece of code, and then use that to make the other part of the program, which in turn made another program?



Is the idea of a person making themselves out of nothing but....nothing?



ANSWERS?! :confused: <img src="graemlins/smokin.gif" border="0" alt="[Chilling]" />

Comments

  • Reply 1 of 10
    macmattmacmatt Posts: 91member
    Feel free to correct me, but Apple wrote the builder programs from raw code. That's how I see it.
  • Reply 2 of 10
    kickahakickaha Posts: 8,760member
    Er... Apple didn't write PB and IB.



    NeXT did.



    But yeah, the first gen of them was written in just code. There's nothing keeping you from writing a Cocoa app purely programmatically, so they wrote a minimalist IB, used that to whip up the next IB, which let them make a more complex IB...



    It's the same principle behind compilers.



    If all binary executables come from compilers, and compilers are binary executables... where did the first compiler come from? (It's called bootstrapping...)
  • Reply 3 of 10
    nebagakidnebagakid Posts: 2,692member
    bootstraping?



    sounds saucy.....





    Any who, so, it was an asexual evolution?
  • Reply 4 of 10
    chris cuillachris cuilla Posts: 4,825member
    Kickaha has it exactly right (though I cannot speak specifically about PB and IB). But that is basically how it happens.



    This is a really powerful concept in tool development and software in particular.



    If you can grab onto this concept of building tools, and then building bigger and better tools with those tools...watch out!
  • Reply 5 of 10
    Kickaha is right. Those were both NeXT apps that Apple bought.



    In addition, did you know that Project Builder is just a fancy frontend to some CLI apps? Run top while you're compiling in PB and you'll see a bunch of extra processes spring up.
  • Reply 6 of 10
    rogue27rogue27 Posts: 607member
    I'd guess "make" and "cc" are two of those processes that spring up?



    Anyway, another funny thing about the compiler building compiler concept...



    gcc 3.1 will generate faster PowerPC code than gcc 2.9.5 which is currently available.



    if apple uses gcc 2.9.5 to compile gcc 3.1, they can use the newly compiled gcc 3.1 to re-compile itself and generate a faster executable!
  • Reply 7 of 10
    Those, yes. Also, I believe there is a command line project builder too (I can't check now; I'm not at my Mac).



    BTW, I'm pretty sure gcc 3.1 was included in the most recent downloadable dev tools.
  • Reply 8 of 10
    rogue27rogue27 Posts: 607member
    yeah, the latest download has it, but it's a beta, so I'm waiting...
  • Reply 9 of 10
    nebagakidnebagakid Posts: 2,692member
    yeah, but i dont think it is implemented?
  • Reply 10 of 10
    Project Builder is just a frontend to GCC. And is probably compiled using GCC as is Interface Builder.
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