non-XCode IDE for Cocoa?

Question

I think Xcode is a good IDE, but having used Eclipse for Java development in the past I am quite underwhelmed by XCode's code completion and error/warning feedback. (Most of the time, XCode seems to simply try to match the beginning of a text fragment to "words" in the same document, without even using type information to try to determine the appropriateness of a suggested completion.)

Does anyone have ideas or tricks to make XCode approach Eclipse's cleverness, or to realistically develop Cocoa apps with other IDE:s than XCode?

EDIT: Worth keeping an eye on this: code.google.com/p/objectiveclipse/

Answer 1

Check out JetBrains' new IDE called "App Code". It's still in the Early Access Program, but even with the Early Access bugs it is hands-down better than xcode 4.

http://www.jetbrains.com/objc/

Answer 2

Xcode does have some context awareness, when you are sending a message to an object it will generally have the "ESC" list pull up meaningful arguments.

One thing I strongly recommend is looking into text macros. These are not really type aware, but they can save a ton of typing - for instance, after @implementation type "init" and then hit control-. (period) to activate the text macro. It will fill out a whole init method for you. You can create your own, or override the existing macros.

Answer 3

I have certainly felt your pain — as an experienced Java developer and frequent Eclipse user, I've wished for the same features myself. Unfortunately, I'm not aware of anything that fits the bill. I don't think there was any satisfactory resolution to this SO question, either.

However, I think you'll be quite happy with the improvements to Xcode code completion coming in Snow Leopard — it's vastly smarter about filtering the list of possible completions. Also, there are new conveniences for coding, such as inserting a starting bracket when you forgot one, etc. To my knowledge, there is still no predictive compiling like Eclipse, though.

Is anyone aware of an IDE other than Eclipse that supports predictive compiling and warning/error reporting? Does Eclipse itself support the feature for languages other than Java, such as C++? I'm led to wonder whether the fact that Java is built with independent .java files rather than .h and .c/.cpp/.m files makes it simpler to predictively compile. Also, anything compiled with gcc requires a little more care and attention than the comparatively simpler javac command. Any thoughts?

Answer 4

I've long voiced my rants about what's wrong with Xcode (and what's not wrong with Xcode). But you really don't want to use another tool. And without breaking NDA: Xcode 3.2 with SnowLeopard: Hooray. (Compared to what we have; not compared to what we might want.)

That said, to your original question about code completion, I personally turn off auto-completion in favor of on-demand completion. I find it far more useful and less distracting. In the Code Sense panel, set "Automatically Suggest" to "Never" and make sure the other two options are selected ("Show arguments in pop-up list" and "Insert argument placeholders...") This will do completion in a pop-up box when you hit Escape, making it easy to scroll through looking for what you want. I find that I have to type a lot less this way, especially for methods that are not unique for many characters. 80% of the time, it's highlighting the right thing already.

Answer 5

Quite simply: no.

You can do almost everything by hand using your favorite text editor but it's not at all recommended. Try designing interfaces without Interface Builder for example.

My advice would be to just stick with Xcode and learn its way of doing things. Yes, it will be different and sometimes might not be "better" in your Eclipsed eyes. Console yourself in the fact that Apple's managed to release some great products using Xcode.

My personal experience is that, each time I use Xcode, I find a new trick which I can add to my bag. Xcode is far more full-featured than what you might think at first (or second) glance.

Answer 6

The good news is, Apple’s working on the problem. One of the goals of the clang compiler project is to create a reusable parser which can be used for better code completion and refactoring support. Indications are that this has borne fruit in the latest Snow Leopard seeds.

Answer 7

emacs and/or vim