How To Import Xcode Project Into Visual Studio For Mac

InfoQ HomepageNewsCompiling Objective-C into C++ with Visual Studio

Swift is a new programming language for iOS and OS X apps that builds on the best of C and Objective-C, without the constraints of C compatibility. The Eclipse Android Project Import extension is available for download for Visual Studio 2015 users. The goal of this extension is to streamline the process of migrating your existing Android projects to Visual Studio. Developer Community for Visual Studio Product family. Hi, i accidentally remove one project from vsts. I have the local git repoitory on my machine, so when i try to import it into a new project it fails because of the size. I have a project that was originally built on Visual Studio on PC. Now that we have VS for Mac we have more developers wanting to contribute, but we need to import the.vssettings file which contains our text formatting standards. According to Myerson, Microsoft has secretly developed an Objective C compiler for Visual Studio—my sources say its codenamed Project Islandwood, but Myerson wouldn’t corroborate that—and an. If you have multiple versions of Xcode installed on your Mac and want Elements to use a specific version (of if the one version of Xcode you have installed is for some reason not detected by default), you can explicitly select a version of Xcode from the 'Command Line Tools' dropdown in the Xcode Preferences window.

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Now I want to port it to MAC so that the code base remains constant as much as possible. I used QT for GUI for the same reason. But I couldn't find a simple way like import VS project along with project settings or some such thing in Xcode to get started quickly on mac part.

While there were rumors that Microsoft would be adopting Android for the Windows 10 platform, no one expected the announcement that iOS applications would also be adopted. This is made possible, by combining C2 with Clang.

Compiler Support

Import project into visual studio

Google and Apple both use Clang for their C++ frontend. In order to make their code run on Windows, Microsoft had to combine Clang with C2, the backend for the Visual C++ compiler.

Apple’s Objective-C also uses Clang for the frontend. So once the Clang was setup for C2, they also gained the ability to parse and compile Objective-C.

IDE Support

Objective-C in Visual Studio has support for syntax highlighting, code completion, and debugging support. C++ and C# files can be included in the same project, allowing programs to directly make calls across the boundary. The compiler will handle all of the marshalling so the developer just sees normal function calls.

Most Objective-C projects will start as XCode projects, so Visual Studio includes the ability to import that project type. The VS and XCode project files can live the folder, allowing you to work in both IDEs on the same project.

Mixed Mode Projects

Windows offers new APIs to Objective-C applications such as Live Tiles. In order to ensure code can continue to be shared between both platforms, Microsoft is offering the ability to use runtime checks to see if the Windows API is available prior to invoking it. Alternately, you can explicitly use preprocessor directives to segregate platform specific code from shared code.

Runtime Behaviors

By default the Objective-C runtime on Windows detects application’s original platform to determine behavior. For example, if you port an iPhone application then it will default to running in a narrow window while an iPad application runs in a normal window.

Import project into visual studio

All of this behavior can be overridden by the application when needed.

iOS API Compatibility

How Do I Load A Project Into Visual Studio

Windows 10 is supporting a “reasonable subset” of the iOS APIs. It does not track a particular version of iOS, but instead looks at metrics to see which APIs are most commonly used. For the first version, the APIs Microsoft focused on include:

  • Games: OpenGL, OpenAL, and Sensors are well supported.
  • UI: UIKit, CoreAnimation, CoreGraphics, CoreText, Touch
  • Objective-C: ARC, Blocks, Foundation

For features such as share, notifications, and StoreKit, developers need to choose between keeping the iOS APIs or switching to the Windows alternative. If you keep the iOS APIs, Windows will provide a compatibility layer so that the APIs will just work. The benefit of switching is that you gain access to advanced Windows features.

Swift

Microsoft’s official stance on Swift is “No comment at this time”. Unofficially, they want to support it but are currently too busy working on getting Objective-C ready for the fall to dedicate resources for Swift.

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Discuss
Hi Jalazmi - If you built an OS/X project--i.e. a program intended to run on a Mac--just make a copy of the .app package like this:
1) Open your project and find the Products section in the Groups & Files tree in the project window;
2) Expand Products and Ctrl-click on the app you wish to distribute;
3) Select Reveal in Finder from the floating menu;
4) Ctrl-click on the app in the Finder window and select Compress.
5) Distribute the resulting .zip file.
Of course if your app will require additional installation after unzipping, you'll need to build the necessary installation package or include the steps in a Readme.
If you built an iPhone project, you can only distribute your program on the net (i.e. other than the iTunes Store) by following the instructions for Ad Hoc Distribution in the Dev Program Portal. That type of distribution is only for a limited number of iPhone/iPod Touch devices, usually for beta testing your app.
Hope that helps!
- Ray

Jul 3, 2009 3:12 PM