I’ve been learning a lot about tools for developing iOS apps and its amazing how much these tools, when you learn how to use them, can help you:
- Source Control
- Snippets
- Edit in Scope
- Speech Assistant
- Appirater
- TestFlight SDK
Let’s look at these one by one:
- Source Control. This tool is for creating “Time Machine” like versions of your project as you progress through your project and make changes to it. The idea is two-fold: (a) Keep important subversions, i.e. version 1.0, 1.0.1, 1.0.5, 1.1.0 etc of your project as you make changes to it. And (b), share those versions with a team of developers so that you all have current working versions of the project as everyone makes their own changes to it. My suggestion is to look at the WWDC 2011 video called Mastering Source Control in Xcode.
- Snippets. As you find yourself writing the same code for performing repetitive tasks over and over, you want to be able to create snippets of the code so you can eventually just plug that code block or code snippet into a new app by dragging it from your snippet library.
- Edit in Scope. This allows you to edit the name of a variable or pointer and have Xcode change all mentions of it within the scope of your app.
- Speech Assistant. Have Xcode read your file to you. This may seem like a luxury but when your eyes get tired, it’s nice to have someone read it to you 🙂
- Appirater. This is not precisely an Xcode tool but it’s a must have feature for apps in the AppStore. Get your users involved by having the rate your app. This API will display Alert View Windows in your app asking him to rate it for you.
- TestFlight SDK. This is a great new API that along with the Web App which allows you to upload builds to share ad-hoc, there is a simple to use API that creates logs and crash reports for you as well as checkpoint flags that report back to you and tells you what is happening with your app as the user tests it for you.