New major version of Xcode becomes widely available to the public

Mar 11, 2014 13:08 GMT  ·  By

Xcode 5.1 has been in beta, shaded away from the eyes of the public, for the past three months. Incrementally updated once every two weeks or so, the development toolset has reached its final form and is now freely available to the general population via the Mac App Store.

Previously available to registered Apple developers only, Xcode 5.1 can be yours now for free, by taking a short trip to the Mac App Store. Xcode 5.1 includes software development kits (SDKs) for OS X 10.9 Mavericks, OS X 10.8 Mountain Lion, and iOS 7.1, the newest firmware for iPhone, iPod touch, and iPad.

Some new features are included, such as a new Auto Layout constraint inspector with support for all constraint types, Quick Look support in the debugger for custom object types, updated iOS standard architecture to include 64-bit, bug fixes and stability improvements, and a better way to resolve symbols in Instruments.

To download Xcode 5.1 you’ll need at least 2GB of free disk space on your Mac, but you’re likely to need more as soon as you mount that disk image to have the toolset installed. Currently localized in English only, Xcode 5.1 requires OS X 10.8.4 (Mountain Lion) as the minimum OS version to work on.