Doing a little iOS work - Xcode is as bad as I remember

Our iOS programmer left. We have a new one starting next month. During the change over time I am doing some updates to the iOS code. Luckily before he left I got a pretty good overview of the current code so I am not running blind.

The fun is always Xcode. Never have liked that IDE much but it has been a few years since I did iOS work so I figured it has had time to improve. While Swift may have improved the areas I use daily to code have not. Git support is still barebones so I had to use SourceTree. SourceTree is nice and all but I shouldn't have to leave the IDE to interact with source control. I almost never touch SourceTree when doing work in Android Studio. I can easily create branches, merge things, remove branches, check history etc. right in the tool I am already using. I guess Apple really does not care about improving this area because as far as I can tell zero changes here.

Next up is searching. Yes Xcode gives you a number of ways to do it but it changes the mode a lot. If I look up usage of an enum, method or variable then the next time I search it is in that mode. I search for text a lot. Paying attention to the mode it is in because I right clicked on something in code but not on the search panel is frustrating.

Archiving stinks. Who thought this was a good word for building for release? Archive to me means put something out to pasture, you are done with it, store it way as it is old. But here is means build the latest for the store or TestFlight. I battled provisions / certificates / other crap for 45 minutes to get things out on TestFlight. Then I build the IAP for a user and that took a long time. I just started the export and let it run but dang was it slow.

There is also the wonderful fun of Interface Builder. So many tabs to get to settings. I will fully admit I like editing XML manually on Android. See all settings in one place, easy search and replaces as needed, easy to see cut and paste issues that I need to set up as styles. So much clicking in IB and you have to click on little [edit] links instead of on text. Might be powerful but it gets in your way when it comes to speed. Android gives me a choice, use visual editor if I want, manual if I don't. Yes IB generates XML but would you really manually edit what it creates? Last time I did a lot of iOS coding I skipped IB and did it all in code. Worked great for me as I am used to visualizing my layouts into manual XML creation. I used Masonry at the time so it was AutoLayout. Now that I use constraint layout on Android they are even closer.

Was able to pull off the critical changes need for next weeks release. I have never programmed in Swift but it is similar enough to Kotlin, which I have used for past 18 months, it was not too hard. Reactive Swift too boot but again the Kotlin syntax leads you that direction as well.

I came super close to downloading AppCode to use as a 30 day trial to get me over this hump until next dev appears. I may still do that if I have to spend much more time in the code. I have used AppCode at previous positions. Since it basically is same IDE as Android Studio I can hum right along using it and it works great with Git. Maybe I should just have work pony up for it anyway as I end up in the iOS code from time to time as it is. All my other Android tools are free so this can't be asking too much right?

Mavericks, Java, Android Studio, GIT

I installed Mavericks today on my MacBook Pro. The install went fine but it stop me cold for developing on my Android project. Sweet Apple revenge? Not really, they just don't install the developer tools you need by default. I wish the update would look at what you had and update to match but it does not. I did an update of the OS, not a clean install.

Some are getting prompted to install the Apple version of Java 6. I did not get prompted to do so the first time I tried to start up Android Studio. It just did nothing, no bouncing icon and no error message. Highly annoying and not user friendly.

Apple link to Java 6 that works on Mavericks http://support.apple.com/kb/DL1572

With that installed I was able to fire up Android Studio but it could not find GIT. I shut it down.

I was waiting on the install of Xcode to finish. Once that was done I fired up Xcode and it decided to grab the developer command line tools. Now GIT is installed and ready to go.

I appear to be back up and running as far as my Android and iOS development goes.

Outlook is acting weird. It decided to sort of dock itself and moving it just popped back into place when I tried to move it. I then tried Window -> Minimize and restore but that did not help so I did Window -> Zoom and then Outlook did some odd animation witch under a house shrinking up into the corner. I did command Q to quit and restart. It came up with half an email message scrolled off the screen. Doing View -> Navigation Pane seemed to get it back in order for now. It is painting weird in that you can only see half the "Today"header of the email headers.

Macports is not working. First it could not find GNUTAR so I did the following:

sudo ln -s /usr/bin/tar /usr/bin/gnutar

Which let it update and start the update of apps but now it has new issues. They plan and releasing an update soon so I am going to wait on that.

What I really want fixed is the crappy multiple monitor support of Mountain Lion. I really hope Mavericks makes that better. So far it has been a real time killer to get things up and running as a developer though.

I really miss Xtrafinder too. I know Apple added tabs but the other huge feature to me is the ability to sort directories to the top of the listing always. I understand if you don't like that but give us a freaking setting Apple! I don't want to scroll all over to find a stupid directory intermixed with my files. I am sure there are plans to update that too.