A new tutorial on Apple’s developer site looks at Web development and Mac OS X, especially in regards to Project Builder, a text editor and IDE.
Apple provides a set of developer tools with Mac OS X. The tools were originally developed by NeXT for programmers working with Objective-C, but the tools have evolved over the years for use with such source languages as Java, C++ and AppleScript.
Project Builder is targeted to Web developers working in languages like PHP and Perl. Along with a standard Apple graphical interface, it also provides key bindings that will be familiar to Unix users: keys combinations like Ctrl-A or Ctrl-E can be used to move the cursor to the beginning or end of a line, according to Apple.
Other tools bundled in the developer package include GNU Autoconf, both the BSD and GNU versions, and an application called FileMerge, which provides a graphical interface to the Unix diff utility. Project Builder uses FileMerge to display the differences between two versions of a file and allows developers to merge changes from the CVS repository into a new version.
The Apple developer article showcases some of the advantages of Project Builder, as well as tips and tricks.