My First iPhone/iPod Touch App Made On Linux?
Posted: Tue Mar 10, 2009 8:21 pm
Hey guys,
As most of you may know, the iPhone SDK is a powerful tool that includes lots of great applications to develop for the iPhone or iPod Touch.
However, the iPhone SDK is only available on Mac computers.
But, after doing some research, I saw a website telling you how to make your own apps WITHOUT the need for a Mac computer at all!
So how does this work?
Well, all the header files and other source code from the iPhone SDK get placed onto the device itself via SSH into the /var/mobile/include/ directory.
So what do you need to make an app?
A simple file structure containing a build, Classes, and Recources folder.
Inside the root of the main project folder is a Makefile and Info.plist file.
The Recources folder contains all the images needed for the application such as the icon.
The build folder contains the app once you build.
And the Classes folder contains all the source code for the app.
You have your main.m which contains the main function.
And you have the App.h which is the application header file.
And then you have the App.m which is the main class of your application.
Obviously your project may contain more files than that, but that is the base of it all.
The Makefile is configured to build your source code and then you install the app on your device using make and make install.
Once you've done that, you can test out your application on your device.
But how do you build?
Well all of this is done on the device itself, and you build on the device too.
You simply use the terminal or better yet SSH into the device and run the commands to build the app.
The only thing you don't get is GUI support for using UIKit or anything else, no Xcode unfortunately.
But that doesn't mean you can't build apps, you'll be writing the code that the GUI would normally make for you.
So what have I made so far?
Well, I don't have much documentation on the iPhone SDK, and most of the tutorials you see are based on using Xcode and building on a Mac.
So right now I'm testing out some of the features and learning how Objective-C works, slowly learning as I go along.
Here is a screen shot of the current application I'm making.
All that it does right now is when you press the "Pools Closed" button, the text on it switches to "Due To AIDS".
And the ON/OFF switch disables the button, changes it to say "LOCKOUT" and changes the color of the button text.
So far I've learned a little about UIView, UIButton, UIColor, UISwitch, and a few others.
But I still have a long list of header files to go through to learn everything.
If you have a jailbroken iPod Touch or iPhone and you have Cydia, then add this repo to your list:
http://irepo.leonblog.it.cx/
And you'll be able to install my Pools Closed app to test it out.
More to come soon, and if anyone has suggestions on an app I should try to make or features I should implement in this current application, please let me know.
Thanks,
Leon Blade
As most of you may know, the iPhone SDK is a powerful tool that includes lots of great applications to develop for the iPhone or iPod Touch.
However, the iPhone SDK is only available on Mac computers.
But, after doing some research, I saw a website telling you how to make your own apps WITHOUT the need for a Mac computer at all!
So how does this work?
Well, all the header files and other source code from the iPhone SDK get placed onto the device itself via SSH into the /var/mobile/include/ directory.
So what do you need to make an app?
A simple file structure containing a build, Classes, and Recources folder.
Inside the root of the main project folder is a Makefile and Info.plist file.
The Recources folder contains all the images needed for the application such as the icon.
The build folder contains the app once you build.
And the Classes folder contains all the source code for the app.
You have your main.m which contains the main function.
And you have the App.h which is the application header file.
And then you have the App.m which is the main class of your application.
Obviously your project may contain more files than that, but that is the base of it all.
The Makefile is configured to build your source code and then you install the app on your device using make and make install.
Once you've done that, you can test out your application on your device.
But how do you build?
Well all of this is done on the device itself, and you build on the device too.
You simply use the terminal or better yet SSH into the device and run the commands to build the app.
The only thing you don't get is GUI support for using UIKit or anything else, no Xcode unfortunately.
But that doesn't mean you can't build apps, you'll be writing the code that the GUI would normally make for you.
So what have I made so far?
Well, I don't have much documentation on the iPhone SDK, and most of the tutorials you see are based on using Xcode and building on a Mac.
So right now I'm testing out some of the features and learning how Objective-C works, slowly learning as I go along.
Here is a screen shot of the current application I'm making.
All that it does right now is when you press the "Pools Closed" button, the text on it switches to "Due To AIDS".
And the ON/OFF switch disables the button, changes it to say "LOCKOUT" and changes the color of the button text.
So far I've learned a little about UIView, UIButton, UIColor, UISwitch, and a few others.
But I still have a long list of header files to go through to learn everything.
If you have a jailbroken iPod Touch or iPhone and you have Cydia, then add this repo to your list:
http://irepo.leonblog.it.cx/
And you'll be able to install my Pools Closed app to test it out.
More to come soon, and if anyone has suggestions on an app I should try to make or features I should implement in this current application, please let me know.
Thanks,
Leon Blade
