F-Script - an essential tool for cocoa developers

I've read about F-Script at least 5 times before I actually decided to give it a try. What convinced me is that every one who had the opportunity to see it in action seemed to be under a big impression. Soon enough the time came for me to be under impression too.

It was so easy to set up I started playing around with it in a matter of minutes. The possibilities are pretty much endless. Think about it as programming (and debugging) objective-c applications dynamically during runtime. You can tinker around with your controls, see what data you're storing without having to use a debugger, check your bindings and core data objects.



I'd like this post to encourage you to give F-Script a try. In order to achieve this I'll tell you how to set everything up and how to start using F-Script from within the application you are developing. This shouldn't take more than 5 minutes.

1) Step 1 - Download F-Script from www.fscript.org
2) Install the F-Script interface builder plugin

Go into the F-Script folder you downloaded and copy FScriptIBPlugin.ibplugin to /Developer/Platforms/MacOSX.platform/Developer/Library/Interface Builder/Plug-ins/

3) Open your XCode project and add FScript.framework to the project frameworks.




Locate the framework and click "Add".

4) Set up your project to copy the FScript.framework to the target when compiling.


Choose the target and from the context menu choose "New Copy Files Build Phase". This will create a new build phase which will always copy the files you specify when building the project.


From the "Destination" popup menu choose "Frameworks" and close the window.


Position the new build phase just below the "Copy Bundle Resources" phase (although to tell you the truth I haven't ever really checked if order is important, I just assume it is as it doesn't hurt), rename it to "Copy Frameworks" and drag the FScript.framework file you previously added to your projects frameworks to the new build phase.

5) Open MainMenu.nib (or .xib) and drag the FScript menu control from the control library to your menu.


Locate the FScript menu item in the Interface Builder library palette.


Drag and drop it to the main menu of your application.

6) Build and Run your application. From the main menu choose F-Script -> Object browser. A new window will open. Click "Select view" and click on a view which properties you wish to observe. Enjoy!