Developer Documentation
I'm looking for:
- General Manuals
- Library Reference Manuals
- Mini-tutorials
- Objective-C
- GNUstep Database Library (GDL2)
- GNUstep Web (GSWeb)
- GNUstep Contributor Guidelines
- User Guides
Suggestions of more links welcome by email.
Anyone wishing to write documentation (or completely revise the following) please get in touch with one of the GNUstep maintainers or the general discussion mailing list.
General Manuals
The links here describe the development facilities provided under GNUstep. The Base Programming Manual introduces GNUstep as a whole, Objective-C, its main language, and the Base library, its basic set of non-graphical utility classes. The Make Utility makes project building easy and is highly recommended.
- Base Programming Manual (PDF)
- Base Command-line Tools
- Make Utility (Release notes, PDF)
- Debugging Information
- GUI Programming Manual (PDF)
- GNUstep Developer Tools
- OpenStep Compliance for Foundation and AppKit.
- OpenStep specification (PostScript, HTML.tar.gz, PDF)
- Apple MacOS X Developer Site - a wealth of information on OpenStep.
- GNUstep User Interface Guidelines
- OpenStep User Interface Guidelines (PDF)
- Original NeXTStep 3.3 Documentation with User Interface Guidelines.
- Developer FAQ (PDF)
- Wiki Docs
GNUstep Library Documentation
This is the reference documentation for our library suite. If you find a blank, please send an update to the maintainer.
- Base Library API (Release notes)
- Base Additions API
- GUI Library API (Release notes)
- GUI Additions API
All our documentation is on the ftp site as a compressed tar file in the docs directory.
For general OpenStep documentation, you can usually refer to Apple's documentation for the MacOS X Foundation.
GNUstep Developer Mini-Tutorials
Short documents showing you how to program with the GNUstep libraries. Collect them all! Write one of your own! Some are available for download in PostScript and LaTeX. See Nicola's Tutorial Page for info.
- Fun with Objective-C (Introductory)
- Writing Makefiles
- Using Basic Classes
- First GUI Application
- Creating Windows and Buttons
- Distributed Objects
- More on GNUstep Makefiles
- My First Application (With ProjectCenter and Gorm Interface Builder)
- Intro to GNUstep and Gorm (From the Linux Journal)
Also look through the excellent articles produced by Stepwise:
- HoldMe, an article on reference counting and garbage collection.
- Working with NSDocument - A Practical Primer and follow-up tutorials on HTMLedit. An example of how easy it is to create a useful word processor in five minutes or less.
- Objective-C Style Conventions 1
- Objective-C Style Conventions 2
- Cocoa 101 by Jared White at OSNews: Part 1 and Part 2
Objective-C Documentation
Objective-C is the main language of GNUstep. If you want to learn more about it than the mini-tutorals, we know of:
- Objective-C home page by Steve Dekorte
- GNU Objective-C Language Manual
- GCC Objective-C Runtime Features
- Another version of the Objective-C Reference in quick, easy HTML format.
- Programming in Objective-C - printed book from Sams Publishing
- Optimizing Objective-C code
- Objective-C Beginner's Guide
- Cocoa Programming for MacOS X - printed book, the second edition of which now contains a GNUstep chapter.
- Apple's Objective C Programming Language
- C programming tutorial - articles by Scott Stevenson (this site's graphic designer) explaining the C needed to program in ObjC.
- The book Object-Oriented Programming : An Evolutionary Approach by Brad J. Cox and Andrew J. Novobilski. The page also has an interview with Brad Cox and other information.
- Objective C Book in pdf format
- Projects using Objective-C
GNUstep Database Library (GDL2) Documentation
This suite implements an SQL abstraction layer to support storing objects persistently in SQL-based Relational Database Management Systems (RDBMS). It aims at compatibility with Apple's Enterprise Objects Framework (EOF) as delivered with WebObjects 4.5.1.
GNUstepWeb (GSWeb) Documentation
- GSWeb Online Documentation (see also: Apple's WebObjects Online Documentation (PDF))
- GNUstep Web Site
Documentation for GNUstep Contributors
If you are helping develop the GNUstep libraries themselves, please read these. In particular, read the GNUstep coding standards.