On Wed, Oct 9, 2019 at 7:19 PM Turtle Creek Software via Cocoa-dev <cocoa-dev@lists.apple.com> wrote: > > Why is Cocoa source code hidden? > > Many of the frustrations we had with the 64-bit update attempt were caused > by Cocoa's lack of visible source. It was a "black box" that often required > trial-and-error to figure out. Yeah, the headers are visible, and Apple has > info online. But sometimes that was not sufficient to understand the actual > implementation details.
Cocoa source code is not really hidden if you use the proper tools and know how to use them and that you should not rely 100% on them. With Hopper Disassembler, you can see any Obj-C framework source code in /System/Library/(Private)Frameworks. Although most of the time you don't need to see the source code, there are some areas that are poorly covered by the developer documentation and being able to see the implementation details is very useful. For instance, if you ever had to write a custom subclass of NSCell or a subclass of NSControl with multiple cells, the official documentation was almost totally useless and this was a good opportunity to find out about the private API Apple was keeping to itself to make the AppKit controls work. It's true that having access to the source code can also help finding issues and suggesting patches. But it's also true that if Apple had been doing a proper job at checking the warnings and static analysis outputs of its own IDE, numerous issues could have been fixed without having needed to be reported by 3rd party developers. If you combine otool, classdump and Hopper Disassembler, you can find how some Cocoa methods are working in any Obj-C executable pretty easily. https://www.hopperapp.com http://stevenygard.com/projects/class-dump/ Checking cocotron can also be helpful if you want to see how someone else implemented most Foundation and AppKit legacy APIs. _______________________________________________ Cocoa-dev mailing list (Cocoa-dev@lists.apple.com) Please do not post admin requests or moderator comments to the list. Contact the moderators at cocoa-dev-admins(at)lists.apple.com Help/Unsubscribe/Update your Subscription: https://lists.apple.com/mailman/options/cocoa-dev/archive%40mail-archive.com This email sent to arch...@mail-archive.com
