[CMake] Building Xcode project

[Chris Scharver]

On Jan 4, 2005, at 10:13 AM, Ondřej Valík wrote:

> I have read discussion (April-2004) about using CMake as tool for 
> generating Xcode project (.pbxproj inside .xcode bundle, not 
> makefiles) from set of source files. So I want to ask if anybody uses 
> CMake to generate Xcode project successfully and could point me out to 
> some documentation or help.

Unfortunately, Apple has not released any documentation on the project 
file formats. There appears to be binary information (perhaps file 
system references?). It seems like Apple isn't willing to document the 
format in a way that would allow CMake to directly generate the project 
bundles. XCode does have AppleScript support, and it seems like that 
might be the recommended way to generate a project. CMake would have to 
generate an AppleScript, but it could then execute that AppleScript to 
generate the project. AppleScript has other potential pitfalls, like it 
may require the user is logged into the GUI in order to run.

I don't have any AppleScript experience though. I did make a quick 
glance at XCode's AppleScript dictionary, and it looks pretty thorough. 
I didn't take the time to try to manually create a project.

Another approach might be to create a stub XCode legacy project that 
uses CMake-generated makefiles.

Chris

--
Chris Scharver
Electronic Visualization Laboratory
The University of Illinois at Chicago
Ph: 312-996-3002   FAX: 312-413-7585
<http://www.evl.uic.edu/scharver/>