BUILDING.md

Ice for Objective-C Build Instructions

This page describes how to build and install Ice for Objective-C from source code on macOS. If you prefer, you can install a Homebrew package instead.

• Objective-C Build Requirements
  • Operating Systems and Compilers
• Building Ice for Objective-C
  • Build configurations and platforms
  • Ice Xcode SDK
• Installing an Objective-C Source Build
• Building the Test Suite
• Running the Test Suite
  • macOS
  • iOS Simulator
  • iOS

Objective-C Build Requirements

Operating Systems and Compilers

Ice for Objective-C is currently only supported on macOS and iOS, and was extensively tested using the operating system and compiler versions listed for our supported platforms.

Building Ice for Objective-C

The build of Ice for Objective-C requires that you first build Ice for C++ in the cpp subdirectory for the same configuration(s) and platform(s).

Review the top-level config/Make.rules in your build tree and update the configuration if needed. The comments in the file provide more information.

Change to the Ice for Objective-C source subdirectory:

cd objective-c

Run make to build the Ice Objective-C libraries and test suite. Set V=1 to get a more detailed build output. You can build only the libraries with the srcs target, or only the tests with the tests target. For example:

make V=1 -j8 srcs

Build configurations and platforms

The Objective-C source tree supports multiple build configurations and platforms. To see the supported configurations and platforms:

make print V=supported-configs
make print V=supported-platforms

To build all the supported configurations and platforms:

make CONFIGS=all PLATFORMS=all -j8

The arc- configurations (for Automatic Reference Counting) apply only to the test suite; the Ice libraries don't use these configurations, and the same Ice for Objective-C library can be used with and without ARC.

Ice Xcode SDK

The build system supports building Xcode SDKs for Ice. These SDKs allow you to easily develop Ice applications with Xcode. To build Xcode SDKs, use the xcodesdk configurations:

make CONFIGS=xcodesdk -j8 srcs  # Build the Objective-C mapping Xcode SDK
                                # for the default platform

The Xcode SDKs are built into ice/sdk.

Installing an Objective-C Source Build

Simply run make install. This will install Ice in the directory specified by the prefix variable in ../config/Make.rules.

When compiling Ice programs, you must pass the location of the <prefix>/include directory to the compiler with the -I option, and the location of the library directory with the -L option.

Building the Test Suite

make all or make tests builds the test suite for the platform(s) and configuration(s) you selected.

However, in order to run the test suite on iphoneos, you need to build the Objective-C Controller app from Xcode:

• Open the Objective-C Test Controller project located in the objective-c/test/ios/controller directory.
• Build the Objective-C Controller or Objective-C ARC Controller app.

Cleaning the source build

Running make clean will remove the binaries created for the default configuration and platform.

To clean the binaries produced for a specific configuration or platform, you need to specify the CONFIGS or PLATFORMS variable. For example, make CONFIGS=xcodesdk clean will clean the Xcode SDK build.

To clean the build for all the supported configurations and platforms, run make CONFIGS=all PLATFORMS=all clean.

Running make distclean will also clean the build for all the configurations and platforms. In addition, it will also remove the generated files created by the Slice compilers.

Running the Test Suite

Python is required to run the test suite. After a successful source build, you can run the tests as shown below. If everything worked out, you should see lots of ok messages. In case of a failure, the tests abort with failed.

macOS

python3 allTests.py # default config and default platform
python3 allTests --config=... --platform=... # use the specified config and platform

iOS Simulator

python3 allTests.py --config=xcodesdk --platform=iphonesimulator --controller-app

iOS

• Start the Objective-C Controller or Objective-C ARC Controller app on your iOS device, from Xcode.
• On your Mac:

python3 allTests.py --config=xcodesdk --platform=iphoneos

or

python3 allTests.py --config=arc-xcodesdk --platform=iphoneos

All the test clients and servers run on the iOS device, not on your Mac computer.