“64-bit” is a mantra that this week’s Worldwide Developers Conference (WWDC) 2004 attendees are hearing a lot. The memory addressing capability is something that’s unique on Macs to Apple’s Power Mac G5 systems. A year after G5s were first introduced, it looks like the operating system and code programming tools are finally catching up. Apple CEO Steve Jobs told WWDC keynote address attendees earlier today that Mac OS X v10.4 “Tiger” will ship with 64-bit support, and now word has come from Apple that its Xcode 2 development environment will support the development of 64-bit applications as well.
The forthcoming version of Xcode is being previewed at WWDC this week. In addition to 64-bit support the software develop adds new capabilities including Dead Code Stripping, which enables developers to remove unused executable code from compiled applications; and Visual Modeling and Design, which lets programmers create and design their application structure graphically. Other new features include an integrated Apple Reference Library; an enhanced version of the GCC v3.5 compiler; remote graphical debugging; automatic generation of Velocity Engine-optimized code; Ant build system support for Java application development; and support for Subversion Source Code management, in addition to CVS and Perforce.
Xcode 2 will be included with Mac OS X v10.4 when it’s released in the first half of 2005.
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