Re: Where do I put my source code?

[Peter Cooper]

Hi Peter

I don't know if you have already received a response, but I'll try to
help.

> I can read the following on the gnu site:
> 
> 2.1 What's the file suffix for Objective-C source ?
> 
> It's .m for implementation files, and .h for header files.
> Objective-C compilers usually also accept .c as a suffix, but compile those 
> files in plain C mode.
> 
> Ok, so far so good. The reason I am asking Is because i don't really 
> understand where to put my source code. Yea, call it a stupid question, I 
> am new to this. I want to organize my source in different files. When I 
> press a button for example I want all source code that belongs to that 
> button in 1 doc and so on. Can someone explain how to do this please? And 
> in a simple way :-)

The first thing you should do is take a look at Nicola Pero's wonderful
tutorials. It's amazing how fast you can get amazingly cool things to work:

http://www.gnustep.it/nicola/Tutorials/

The introduction to the GNUstep Makefile system is very very helpful -
compiling all those files with their different objects is made a lot
easier if you use it.

If you work through the tutorials, you'll see some good simple examples of 
how you can create Objective-C programs. Nicola refers to the following
introduction to Objective-C:

http://www.toodarkpark.org/computers/objc/

In general, Objective-C is written with one class per .m file. The .m files
contain the @implementation part of the class. 

But so that the compiler can tell whether you are using objects as their
class definition requires, a .h file is used to wrap the @interface part
of the class, and that is #include'd into other files that reference your
class.

You don't have to do it this way (Nicola shows some examples where reusing
some classes isn't necessary, and everything is in one file), but it is
a very very good way of building software which consists of many objects
and which has parts you might want to use again in a different project.

When it comes to writing complicated GUI-based applications, you will want
to have a good grasp of Objective-C and some knowledge of the GNUstep 
libraries (which are very similar to Apple's Cocoa, so you could also
get books from your library or bookshop for more information). There are
some good tools to build GUIs - check out Gorm and Renaissance, and there's
an excellent build tool call ProjectCenter.

Good luck, GNUstep is getting better and better every day, while Objective-C
is a very powerful and fun way to write software.

Regards

Peter