Cross Platform IDEs

There are two major cross platform IDEs that support Objective-C and are free. These are CLion and Visual Studio Code. CLion is free for non-commercial use and since Oolite is not a commercial product, it can be used for free while Visual Studio Code is free for both private or commercial use.

Both IDEs support syntax highlighting of Objective-C code (as well as C, C++ and a variety of other languages). It is possible to set up both to run Oolite's makefile so that the project can be built. This requires sourcing the relevant GNUstep file in a shell before launching the IDE in that shell (or making a script that does this). For example, on Linux sourcing the GNUstep file looks like this:

source /usr/share/GNUstep/Makefiles/GNUstep.sh

It may be possible to get debugging in the IDE to work.

More information about CLion's Objective-C support can be found here.

This is a view of the project in CLion:

It shows all the Git submodules:

These are all the make targets that are autodetected if the GNUstep file is sourced before launching the IDE as described above:

This is a view of the project in Visual Studio Code. Extensions that have been added include Microsoft's ones for C/C++ and Makefile Tools and third party ones: C/C++ Clang Command Adapter which offers "Completion and Diagnostic for C/C++/Objective-C using Clang Command" and vscode-makefile-term which "allows you to run a Makefile target from within the editor by clicking above the target".

This shows the extension running makefile targets: