MonoTouch XCode

Table of contents 1 Requirements 2 Sanity Check 3 Using the MonoTouch Framework 4 Embedding the Sample

Requirements

To get started with MonoTouch and XCode you will need to install:

• XCode from Apple
• iPhone developer SDK from Apple
• MonoTouch

Sanity Check

Once you have the above, start XCode and create a simple shell that will contain Mono, this is done by following these steps:

• From the File Menu, select New Project
• Select in iPhone OS the “Window based application” option.
• Select Run from the Run menu

The above should launch an empty application in the iPhone simulator.

Device Developers: If you are a registered iPhone developer, you will want to also test that the above application runs on the iPhone or the iPod Touch by changing the Active SDK from “Simulator- XX

Debug” to “Device - XX

Debug” where XX is the version of the SDK that you have installed. Make sure that this application works correctly before proceeding.

Using the MonoTouch Framework

To use MonoTouch with your existing Objective-C project, you need to use the MonoTouch Framework. Follow these steps to prepare your project:

1. Open your project and go to Project->Edit Project Settings and select the “Build” tab
2. Change the Configuration drop down to “All Configurations”
3. Add “/Developer/MonoTouch/SDKs/MonoTouch1.0.$(PLATFORM_NAME).sdk” to the “Additional SDKs” field
4. Add “-liconv -lmono -lmonotouch” to the “Other Linker Flags” field
5. Change the “Code Signing Resource Rules Path” to “$(SDKROOT)/ResourceRules.plist”

Embedding the Sample

The next step is to create a sample C# program that will drive your application, from the File menu create a new file, select “Other” and then “Empty file” and call this “simple.cs”

In this file put the following code:

using MonoTouch.UIKit;
 
class Sample {
    static void Main (string [] args)
    {
        UIApplication.Main (args);
    }
}

You can compile the above program using the MonoTouch C# compiler, like this:

smcs simple.cs -r:monotouch.dll

The next is to embed Mono in your Objective-C code and to have the code call the C# code. The simplest thing is to get the basics generated by the mtouch tool, issue the following command:

mtouch simple.exe

The result of running the above command will produce a few files:

• main.m: the source code to embed Mono in your Objective-C code.
• *.s: various files that contain the ARM assembly code for your program and any of their dependencies.
• Info.plist: a sample Info.plist that you can use
• PkgInfo: a sample PkgInfo that you can use.

You must add all of the *.m and *.s files to your build.