What do I need to know to create Xcode project templates?

Question

I know some of the tutorials for creating Xcode project templates, for example this one here: http://robnapier.net/blog/project-templates-364

This is the best one I coul

Answer 1

There is indeed little XCode template info out there. What I have found of interest are the following links (I documented myself on the topic, but haven't yet gone any further):

• a Google Code search reveals a few examples, but not much
• in particular, I found interesting to look at the code provided by Three20; they have some basic examples, like here
• referencing another project worked for me, so maybe you could open a specific question about that giving more details?
• there is information scattered on the Apple mailing-lists
• there is no official documentation from Apple, as is evidenced by the lack of results to this query

I'm sorry if this is not a Enlighting, concise answer. As you said, it's not well documented, and sources are all over the place. I just hope I could highlight some places to find information that your own searches might not have reached :)

Answer 2

Have you seen these:

http://www.sodeso.nl/?p=895
http://www.codeproject.com/KB/iPhone/CreatingXcodeProject.aspx

If you say you have searched, I'm pretty sure you've already seen the links but these are the best resources I could find with my 'googlabilities'

You might try contact this guy - http://linkedin.com/in/mottishneor he has some related messages around the web

The links suggested by FX are also not bad at all!

Answer 3

I don't have a Mac anymore, so this is as much as I can give you without testing this myself. As far as I can tell, Xcode templates are undocumented by Apple.

• This guy has some guides for messing with Xcode templates but the info is pretty sparse. My suggestion for working with templateChooser.plist is to try to only edit that file in the interface builder.

• This guide is a good example of how to add a reference to another .xcodeproj. For the reason you were having trouble adding a reference to your project we probably need more information.

• If you scroll way down in this doc you can that each template already includes a script called myscript.sh. This script will show up in the scripts menu for projects built with that template. That isn't quite as convenient as running scripts automatically, but it's better than nothing.

• In conclusion, Xcode template documentation is a nightmare. It looks like there are a lot of powerful features there, but they are obscured because of lack of user friendlyness and because documentation lags far behind Apples updates of Xcode. It just doesn't seem to be a priority for them. I hope this helps.

Answer 4

And yet another video link http://howtomakeiphoneapps.com/2010/10/how-to-make-custom-xcode-templates-with-video/