How to include Apple 'frameworks' on Eclipse CDT

Question

As a follow up to another question I recently asked, I realize my issue is that I don\'t know how to include Apple \'frameworks\' in the Eclipse CDT project properties so th

Answer 1

An alternative answer to JohnIdol's answer. In particular, an approach that can work in the case that you don't want to change the reference to

First, I came to the site with exactly this question in mind (how to include Apple 'frameworks' in Eclipse CDT (C/C++) projects) and I really appreciate the discussion - it gave me a starting point.

John's answer is cool but it does involve changing how the include file is called (e.g., becomes in the code). Then he does a direct include-path reference in the eclipse properties for each Header directory he needs.

In my case, I had checked-out GNU Backgammon to play around with the source code. This code compiles (with some mods to LDFLAGS and CPPFLAGS before doing the autogen.sh) on the OS X CLI environment using the I-guess-standard apple approach of the -framework option and with include files references like #include

I may never actually commit anything but I didn't want to start hacking the #includes in code that is already compiling just fine using the standard approach. So I did the following:

1. Made a new directory in my workspace gnubg called "Frameworks".

2. Inside that directory, make soft-links to the header directories.

   ln -s /System/Library/Frameworks/CoreAudio.framework/Headers CoreAudio
   

3. In the gnubg project properties > C/C++ General> Paths and Symbols, added /gnubg/Frameworks to the Include directories (as a workspace path). I only had to do this once, regardless of the number of soft links I made.

This way I did not have to change the code at all, Eclipse was happy, CLI compilation was happy as well.

I note that there is a slight wrinkle if using some directories in Frameworks such as the CoreServices.framework. In those cases there is a Frameworks subdirectory and relative path references in some of the include files (e.g., ..) to other include files. So in this case I had to modify the procedure a bit. Basically, I had to add an additional sub-directory in Frameworks for CoreServices.framework and then in that directory I had to add two soft links. One for the CoreServices (for the Headers) and one for Framework subdirectory.

lrwxr-xr-x  1 dhansen  staff    57B Jul 27 02:06 CoreServices -> /System/Library/Frameworks/CoreServices.framework/Headers
lrwxr-xr-x  1 dhansen  staff    60B Jul 27 02:05 Frameworks -> /System/Library/Frameworks/CoreServices.framework/Frameworks

Then I had to add /gnubg/Frameworks/CoreServices.framework to the include path (step 3 above).
And that's it. No more include file problems.