Build native iPhone applications in Leopard with Xcode 3.0

While Apple gears for the launch of its own, official software development kit (SDK) for the iPhone, the unofficial application development community continues to thrive. In addition to the continuing surge of new third-party applications available through Installer, the community continues to make headway with regard to more accessible development tools.

Following in the footsteps of Lucas Newman, who developed the first unofficial iPhone SDK and was subsequently hired by Apple, Ben Stahlhood has created a complete guide to building native iPhone applications using XCode 3.0 under Mac OS X 10.5 (Leopard). Included are instructions for setting up a staging area, creating a mountable iPhone filesystem, installing the toolchain, and finally setting up XCode with a custom iPhone application template. Much of this process was developed by Newman and others in the development community, but has been updated and refined significantly by Stahlhood.

Stahlhood's Xcode template has the nifty capability to upload your application to the iPhone and restart the SpringBoard (allowing the application to show up and run) upon clicking the build button.

How unofficial development routines and associated applications will fair in the wake of Apple's official SDK remains to be seen, but the vibrancy of current efforts may give pause to users faced with the prospect of giving up their "jailbreak" apps.

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