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Tag Archives: Cocoa

Searching iOS header files with Xcode

By Michael Tyson | Published: April 1, 2013

I’m often having to grep through various iOS frameworks in search of error codes that appear (“What the bloody hell does -10867 mean?”). This can be a bit annoying – especially while working with Core Audio – so I put together an Alfred workflow that does it for me.

Here it is – type “hs” (short for “header search”) then the text you want to search for, and it’ll give you matching results. Hit enter to open that file:line combination in Sublime Text, or edit the action script to work with the editor of your choice.

Search Xcode Header Files.alfredworkflow

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Compiling Image Resources into a Static Library

By Michael Tyson | Published: May 15, 2012

I’ve recently been working on a static library for distribution to other developers — Audiobus — and I need to include a couple of graphical resources with the distribution. The usual solution to this is to include the resources separately in a bundle, and require the user to drop them in to their project along with the static library.

I thought I’d see if I could make the process just a little neater, and successfully devised a way to compile the images straight into the library, so the distribution remains nice and clean — just the library itself and a few header files.

Now, I can pop image resources into a folder, and after compiling, access them within the static library with:

UIImage *image = TPGetCompiledImage(@"Button.png");

It automatically handles “@2x” Retina images (although it doesn’t currently do “~ipad” versions).

Here’s how it’s done.

The magic is in a shell script which uses the xxd hex dump tool to create C code that represents the image data as a byte array, then creates around it a set of utilities to turn those arrays into UIImages on demand.

Along with it is a couple of template files — a header and implementation file — that describe the format of the derived code.

Finally, a little tweaking of the project in Xcode (with a brief foray into a text editor to work around some Xcode shortcomings) puts it all together. Read More »

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Avoiding duplicate symbol issues when using common utilities within a static library

By Michael Tyson | Published: April 15, 2012

Screen Shot 2012 04 15 at 14 03 28I’m working on two projects right now that have static library products, to be given to other developers to use in their projects: Audiobus and The Amazing Audio Engine. In both cases, I’m making quite heavy use of my circular buffer code, TPCircularBuffer, which would result in duplicate symbol errors if the static library were linked with another project that used it.

In case the solution was useful to others, here’s how I worked around it: Use the preprocessor to rename the symbols automatically during the build phase.

This is done by adding a series of -DOldSymbol=NewSymbol flags to the ‘Other C Flags’ build setting – like -DTPCircularBuffer=ABCircularBuffer, for instance.

No more symbol conflicts.

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An Xcode 4 template to create universal static libraries

By Michael Tyson | Published: March 29, 2012

I’ve created an Xcode 4 project template to create universal (armv6, armv7 and simulator) static libraries for iOS, based on Adam Martin’s script:

iOS-Universal-Library-Template

The existing static library template provided with Xcode only builds one architecture, which is not particularly suitable for distribution. A number of people have created scripts to create universal libraries, which require some mucking around with Xcode target settings to use.

This template draws on this work to provide all that is required to produce universal libraries – just select the ‘Universal Static Library’ type in the New Project/New Target dialog, and you’re all set.

Universal static library

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Uploading to TestFlight with a few keystrokes, using Alfred

By Michael Tyson | Published: March 22, 2012

TestFlight IconHere’s a cute little Alfred extension I put together today that uploads a file to a TestFlight team for you, after prompting for build notes.

You’ll wanna edit the extension to put in your API key and Team ID, then just select a file in Alfred, type ‘testflight’ (or an abbreviation thereof) and enter, then enter a build summary, and off it goes. Result will appear in Growl.

Upload to TestFlight.alfredextension

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The Amazing Audio Engine: Funky Remote IO-based Core Audio Engine Coming Soon

By Michael Tyson | Published: March 17, 2012

The Amazing Audio EngineHuzzah! I’m announcing a new project which will be launching over the next couple of months.

It’s called The Amazing Audio Engine, and it represents the product of years of experience with iOS audio. It’s a sophisticated iOS audio engine that lets developers skip the Core Audio learning curve, and get on with writing great software.

The tech behind this is what drives Loopy and Loopy HD, as well as the in-development Audiobus app.

Subscribe at theamazingaudioengine.com to be kept in the loop as it approaches launch time.

Some of the features:

  • Automatic mixing of multiple audio signals with per-channel volume and pan controls.
  • Built-in support for audio filtering and effects, including the ability to form complex filter chains, constructing channel groups, or even whole trees of groups, and filtering them as one composite signal.
  • Built-in support for audio input, including optional use of the Voice Processing IO unit, for automatic echo removal – great for VoIP.
  • Record or monitor the output of the whole audio system, for in-app session recording, or get the output of one channel, or any group of channels in the processing tree.
  • Support for any audio format (AudioStreamBasicDescription) that the hardware supports: Interleaved, non-interleaved, mono, stereo, 44.1kHz or any other supported sample rate, 16-bit, 8.24 fixed floating-point – whatever you need for your project.
  • Very light, efficient engine, designed from the ground up for speed. All Core Audio code is pure C; no Objective- C or BSD calls, no locks, no memory allocation.
  • Efficient mixing of input signals, using Apple’s MultiChannelMixer.
  • Fast, lock-free synchronisation mechanism, enabling developers to send messages to the main thread from the Core Audio context, and vice versa, without locking or memory allocation from the Core Audio thread. Message sending from the main thread is two-way, and can be asynchronous, with a response block, or synchronous.
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Some updates to TPCircularBuffer

By Michael Tyson | Published: February 14, 2012

I’ve recently made some updates to TPCircularBuffer (on GitHub), my C circular/ring buffer implementation, which add a memory barrier on read and write, inline the main functions for a potential performance boost, and add support for use within C++ projects.

If you’re using TPCircularBuffer at all, I recommend updating!

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Circular (ring) buffer plus neat virtual memory mapping trick

By Michael Tyson | Published: December 10, 2011

I’ve just updated my C circular buffer implementation, adopting the trick originally proposed by Philip Howard and adapted to Darwin by Kurt Revis: A virtual copy of the buffer is inserted directly after the end of the buffer, so that you can write past the end of the buffer, but have your writes automatically wrapped around to the start — no need to manually implement buffer wrapping logic.

This dramatically simplifies the use of a circular buffer — you can use chunks of the buffer without any need to worry about where the wrap point is.

See the new implementation, which is thread-safe with one consumer and one producer, with no need for locks, making it perfect for use with high-priority Core Audio threads, on GitHub: TPCircularBuffer.

There’s a basic example of its use over on the original post.

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