ObjFW is a portable, lightweight framework for the Objective C language. It enables you to write an application in Objective C that will run on any platform supported by ObjFW without having to worry about differences between operating systems or various frameworks that you would otherwise need if you want to be portable.

See https://heap.zone/objfw for more information.

Table of Contents

• Installation
  • macOS and iOS
    • Building as a framework
    • Using the macOS or iOS framework in Xcode
  • Windows
    • Getting MSYS2
    • Updating MSYS2
    • Installing MinGW-w64 using MSYS2
    • Getting, building and installing ObjFW
  • Nintendo DS, Nintendo 3DS and Wii
    • Nintendo DS
    • Nintendo 3DS
    • Wii
  • Amiga
• Writing your first application with ObjFW
• Bugs and feature requests
• Commercial use

Installation

To install ObjFW, just run the following commands:

$ ./configure
$ make
$ make install

In case you checked out ObjFW from the Git repository, you need to run the following command first:

$ ./autogen.sh

macOS and iOS

Building as a framework

When building for macOS or iOS, everything is built as a .framework by default if --disable-shared has not been specified to configure.

To build for iOS, use something like this:

$ clang="clang --sysroot $(xcrun --sdk iphoneos --show-sdk-path)"
$ export OBJC="$clang -arch armv7 -arch arm64"
$ export OBJCPP="$clang -arch armv7 -E"
$ export IPHONEOS_DEPLOYMENT_TARGET="10.0"
$ ./configure --prefix=/usr/local/ios --host=arm-apple-darwin

To build for the iOS simulator, use something like this:

$ clang="clang --sysroot $(xcrun --sdk iphonesimulator --show-sdk-path)"
$ export OBJC="$clang -arch i386 -arch x86_64"
$ export OBJCPP="$clang -arch i386 -E"
$ export IPHONEOS_DEPLOYMENT_TARGET="10.0"
$ ./configure --prefix=/usr/local/iossim --host=i386-apple-darwin

Using the macOS or iOS framework in Xcode

To use the macOS framework in Xcode, you need to add the .frameworks to your project and add the following flags to Other C Flags:

-fconstant-string-class=OFConstantString -fno-constant-cfstrings

Windows

Windows is only officially supported when following these instructions, as there are many MinGW versions that behave slightly differently and often cause problems.

Getting MSYS2

The first thing to install is MSYS2 to provide a basic UNIX-like environment for Windows. Unfortunately, the binaries are not signed and there is no way to verify their integrity, so only download this from a trusted connection. Everything else you will download using MSYS2 later will be cryptographically signed.

Updating MSYS2

The first thing to do is updating MSYS2. It is important to update things in a certain order, as pacman (the package manager MSYS2 uses, which comes from ArchLinux) does not know about a few things that are special on Windows.

First, update the mirror list:

$ pacman -Sy pacman-mirrors

Then proceed to update the msys2-runtime itself, bash and pacman:

$ pacman -S msys2-runtime bash pacman mintty

Now close the current window and restart MSYS2, as the current window is now defunct. In a new MSYS2 window, update the rest of MSYS2:

$ pacman -Su

Now you have a fully updated MSYS2. Whenever you want to update MSYS2, proceed in this order. Notice that the first pacman invocation includes -y to actually fetch a new list of packages.

Installing MinGW-w64 using MSYS2

Now it's time to install MinGW-w64. If you want to build 32 bit binaries:

$ pacman -S mingw-w64-i686-clang mingw-w64-i686-gcc-objc

For 64 bit binaries:

$ pacman -S mingw-w64-x86_64-clang mingw-w64-x86_64-gcc-objc

There is nothing wrong with installing them both, as MSYS2 has created two entries in your start menu: MinGW-w64 Win32 Shell and MinGW-w64 Win64 Shell. So if you want to build for 32 or 64 bit, you just start the correct shell.

Finally, install a few more things needed to build ObjFW:

$ pacman -S autoconf automake git make

Getting, building and installing ObjFW

Start the MinGW-w64 Win32 or Win64 Shell (depening on what version you want to build - do not use the MSYS2 Shell shortcut, but use the MinGW-w64 Win32 or Win64 Shell shortcut instead!) and check out ObjFW:

$ git clone https://heap.zone/git/objfw.git

You can also download a release tarball if you want. Now go to the newly checked out repository and build and install it:

$ ./autogen.sh && ./configure && make -j16 install

If everything was successfully, you can now build projects using ObjFW for Windows using the normal objfw-compile and friends.

Nintendo DS, Nintendo 3DS and Wii

Download and install devkitPro.

Nintendo DS

Follow the normal process, but instead of ./configure run:

$ ./configure --host=arm-none-eabi --with-nds

Nintendo 3DS

Follow the normal process, but instead of ./configure run:

$ ./configure --host=arm-none-eabi --with-3ds

Wii

Follow the normal process, but instead of ./configure run:

$ ./configure --host=powerpc-eabi --with-wii

Amiga

Install amiga-gcc. Then follow the normal process, but instead of ./configure run:

$ ./configure --host=m68k-amigaos

Writing your first application with ObjFW

To create your first, empty application, you can use objfw-new:

$ objfw-new app MyFirstApp

This creates a file MyFirstApp.m. The -[applicationDidFinishLaunching] method is called as soon as ObjFW finished all initialization. Use this as the entry point to your own code. For example, you could add the following line there to create a "Hello World":

[of_stdout writeLine: @"Hello World!"];

You can compile your new app using objfw-compile:

$ objfw-compile -o MyFirstApp MyFirstApp.m

objfw-compile is a tool that allows building applications and libraries using ObjFW without needing a full-blown build system. If you want to use your own build system, you can get the necessary flags from objfw-config.

Bugs and feature requests

If you find any bugs or have feature requests, feel free to send a mail to js@heap.zone!

Commercial use

If for whatever reason neither the terms of the QPL nor those of the GPL work for you, a proprietary license for ObjFW including support is available upon request. Just write a mail to js@heap.zone and we can find a reasonable solution for both parties.