14 DAY TRIAL // Developers are signaling the emergence of a new Xcode build available from Apple. Xcode 4.6 Developer Preview 2 is immediately available to registered Apple developers with a paid account.
According to people who are familiar with the software, Xcode 4.6 Developer Preview 2 supports development for iOS 6.1 Developer Preview, OS X Mountain Lion and OS X Lion. The toolset can only be used on computers running OS X 10.8 Mountain Lion, and on OS X 10.7 Lion.
As usual, this preview release of Xcode is distributed as a standalone application bundle dubbed “Xcode46-DP2.app.”
Users must double-click the DMG file to open the downloaded goods, and drag the Xcode46-DP2.app file to their Applications folder to install.
The final Xcode 4.6 release heading to the Mac App Store when this testing cycle ends will be named Xcode.app. Apple says the two builds should not conflict with each other, in case the developer decides to hold on to the preview version.
Developers say Xcode 4.6 DP2 includes support for iPad mini and iPad with Retina display (4th generation), as well as updates to the Apple LLVM compiler and Objective-C language (reproduced below).
· Compilation warnings aid in finding bugs using ARC and weak references. - otool is enhanced to support disassembly of Intel AVX instructions. · Support for C++11 “user defined literals” and “unrestricted unions” features. - Support for MS-style inline assembly.
A number of updates to the LLDB debugger are also included.
· Ability to read metadata from the Objective-C runtime. · Improved support for stepping over inlined functions · Prints function argument information in backtraces by default. · Supports “thread return,” temporary breakpoints, and a variety of aliases to add common shortcuts from GDB. · Elements of NSArray and NSDictionary objects can now be inspected in the Xcode debugger.
Finally, Xcode 4.6 DP2 incorporates various bug fixes and stability improvements, according to the same people.
Apple reportedly documents a fix in the new Xcode, namely a crash triggered by modifying open projects outside of the application.
Some known issues still linger in the beta-grade software. For example, Xcode Refactoring is unavailable at this time.
Registered Apple developers can download Xcode 4.6 Developer Preview 2 by visiting Apple’s Dev Center here.