Apple Releases Xcode 4

Minutes ago, Apple released the latest version of Xcode to developers. Xcode 4 was previewed to attendees of the World Wide Developer Conference in June of 2010 but developers have been unable to discuss the product in open forums as the product has been under NDA.

Xcode 4 introduces an integrated development environment incorporating functionality that was previously delivered through Interface Builder. Additional enhancements include Project Workspaces, which allow developers to easily work across multiple projects, using build outputs of one project to be used as dependencies in another project. (For Visual Studio developers, Project Workspaces are similar to Solutions.)

Xcode runs on Max OS X Snow Leopard and includes the Xcode IDE, Instruments, iOS Simulator, the latest Mac OS X and iOS SDKs and hundreds of new features. Among these are embedded LLVM technologies built into Xcode 4 Analyzer that travels code paths to look for logical errors before they become bugs and Live Issues underlines coding mistakes before building.

Xcode 4 is available via the Mac App Store for $4.99. (It is available at no cost to registered developers via the Developer portal at developer.apple.com.)