make it easier to build the iPhone client for a jailbroken iPhone using open-source toolchain

[davidsarah]

​Marco Bonetti's report of building the iPhone client with open-source tools:

Right now I'm focused on the iPhone client: it's extremely cool to have one, unfortunately (unless I'm missing something really obvious) looks like you're distributing it as Xcode source only.

This is somehow limiting for the distribution of the program: if I'd want to run it on my phone I'd have to build it on a Mac and spend something like $99 yearly to be able to install the binaries on a provisioned phone. So I tried to build it using the open source toolchain on Linux for jailbroken iPhones and... well, let's just say I can build it ;-)

I come up with the attached Makefile but I have very limited code and makefiles writing skills, if someone will help me with the code building process we can probably adapt the Xcode project to be built with open toolchains too.

Usage is not immediate: once you have a working open toolchain, darcs get the sources, then you have to copy the Makefile and the small bash script launcher in the AllMyData? folder. At this point a "make bundle" will start the building process, with lots of problems so far:

• looks like my toolchain doesn't like C99 style definitions in the for loops, it's just a matter of moving the "int i = 0;" out of the loop. Really annoying though and, probably, a problem on my side as it's supposed to be supported in the official toolchain

• I get a LOTS of warning about methods which couldn't be recognized, this is usually a problem which arise when you're not correctly including all the needed headers and framework, I read the project plist fle to get them, but I'm probably missing something

• I'm copying *.png and *.xib inside the main application folder but I should probably create a subfolder, who knows? :D

• you've to link (or move) main.m inside Classes/, this is all for my suckiness at writing Makefiles

• it would be nice to have binaries and bundle built in build/ and not in the sources root, same reason as above ;-)

So, what are the results? Well, I can build the application somehow and I can deploy it on jailbroken phone but, upon start, I can only see the phone background. I think that the binary either fails to load needed xibs (misplaced?) or the functions used are not the right one (the warnings generated during compilation).

By the way, another option for providing binaries should be that of building the application bundle with Xcode, signing the binary with ldid and zipping everything up. But I don't know if this will get the iphone client developer in troubles with Apple and their sdk agreement.