Re: [Libreoffice] Mac OS X Discussion of Using Xcode and SDK >= 10.6

Thanks for your thoughts Norbert.
On 2011-05-09, at 7:46 PM, Norbert Thiebaud wrote:
> On Mon, May 9, 2011 at 5:22 PM, Peter Teeson <peter.teeson@bell.net> wrote:
> > Hi Christian:
> [...]
> > Precisely. So maybe the time is now to start up an Xcode IDE version.
>
> That is very unlikely. when we move to 10.6 that will still be based
> on out current fairly portable build-system.
>
> > If there is support for that I would consider helping.
>
> Well, that's a chicken and egg problem. If you want support for that
> you're gonna have to make it happen...
> If you come up with a way to support using XCode IDE in a
> non-intrusive way (that is without breaking the ability of the current
> build-system to works and without forcing people to use a particular
> GUI -- as most dev around happily use emacs or vi and would probably
> not want to use XCode for editing),
> then by all means submit patches... be warned that it is not going to
> be that easy as the build of the product is fairly complex and the
> code base is huge ( see
> https://www.ohloh.net/p/libreoffice/analyses/latest some 8 millions
> lines of C++ )
>
> Norbert

If my understanding is correct there ought not to be any noticable difference except for Mac users. 
As for forcing people to use it that's not my philosophy. The face is that I am forced to use the 
present mechanism. 

One might (repeat might) be able to graft a nice GUI front end (a.k.a Xcode) and invoke the 
existing build mechanism. I don't see why patches would be involved but then my knowledge of the 
build mechanism is extremely limited.

I thought to try by building just the startup screen module.
However I need to find out where things are . i.e. the end of the wool ball.
Care to point me in the right direction? Please someone?

There are several unix things that have been ported to Mac and Apple even 
gives info on how to approach it.

respect...

Peter