Why isn't there Xcode for Windows?

Question

Why can't Xcode be hacked to be able to run on Windows? Does Xcode have another programming methods?

Also, I heard that iPhone apps are made with Objective-C, so why is this not available in Windows?

Thanks

Answer 1

Actually you can install Mac OS X on any Intel CPU based machine. It is legal as you own the orginal install DVD for the OS X system. After aquiring a copy of Virtualbox or VMWare (either is great, personally I prefer Virtualbox because the display settings are more customizable). Virtualbox allows setup on initial setup while VMWare requires an extra step to ensure compatibility. You can then find the steps online to setup a virtual copy of MacOS X.

After going through the steps to install the OS in the Virtual Machine, you can then go through the process to find XCode in the Apple App Store. From there, have at it. Start programming in XCode and have a good time. Since XCode has its own device emulator you have a built in platform for iOS testing. There may be times where it is a bit buggy but that is to be expected with ANY emulator for ANY system you run.

After you get everything installed and going, sit back and enjoy the programming ride. The only catch is if you want to post anything on the Apple App store and then you will have to deal with getting an Apple Dev License. Objective C can be a bit difficult at times but, at the same time, it can be very satisfying when you solve those programming problems (as with any programming language right ;-) )

Enjoy

PS... this VM install keeps up with all updates from the Apple App Store so keeping the system updated won't be a problem.

PSS... I will not condone anyone for where their source of software is but do keep in mind, setting up a VM with VMWare or Virtualbox and an install DVD is only legal IF you personally OWN the install DVD you created the install image from yourself!

Answer 2

Xcode is a big application written to set of APIs not present on Windows. Porting it would be an enormous job, maintaining it would be a big job, and there are already popular IDEs on the Windows platform.

Answer 3

I guess that porting XCode would be close to very hard (if not impossible) but even if you were able to have a running XCode version under Windows, I guess that it won’t do what you really want it to do. I assume you want a complete iPhone SDK environment which is reliant on XCode and Interface Builder in a very tight way. That’d require the port of Cocoa Frameworks (among other things) that would be, now for real, impossible to port.

Truth is, as much as you will surely need Windows for Windows Phone development, you need a Macintosh computer for iPhone development.

On the other hand, Xcode as an IDE, is not the best in the world, so even if you managed to get Xcode and make it use, .NET (for example), I’d much rather use visual studio for that.

Answer 4

Xcode is written in Objective-C and takes advantage of a number of OS X frameworks, so porting it to Windows would require porting all the frameworks on which Xcode relies. Furthermore, Xcode also uses a number of programming tools that would have to be ported to Windows as well (some of them already are, of course).

There are several reasons that Objective-C isn't readily available on Windows:

1. Most development of Objective-C frameworks takes place on OS X, and a lot of the frameworks aren't open-source and thus can't be ported to Windows (they'd have to be rewritten).
2. There are some open-source frameworks that could be used on Windows -- for example, OS X's AppKit and Foundation frameworks are (mostly) available as part of the GNUstep project -- but these frameworks aren't widely used or supported on Windows, and sometimes lack capabilities found in their OS X counterparts.

That said, GCC is available on Windows, and since GCC is an Objective-C compiler, you could compile Objective-C code on Windows if you had the right libraries available (or didn't use any third-party libraries). But Objective-C isn't terribly useful without supporting frameworks, and those are rare or nonexistent on Windows.

Answer 5

The same reason you can't install Mac OS X on your PC: Apple chooses to make it available only to people who own their own brand of computers.

Answer 6

Same can be said why isn't there Visual Studio 2008 for OSX.