source: trunk/doc/src/developing-on-mac.qdoc@ 321

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/*!
    \page developing-on-mac.html
    \title Developing Qt Applications on Mac OS X
    \brief A overview of items to be aware of when developing Qt applications
        on Mac OS X
    \ingroup platform-notes

    \tableofcontents

    Mac OS X is a UNIX platform and behaves similar to other Unix-like
    platforms. The main difference is X11 is not used as the primary windowing
    system. Instead, Mac OS X uses its own native windowing system that is
    accessible through the Carbon and Cocoa APIs.  Application development on
    Mac OS X is done using Xcode Tools, an optional install included on every
    Mac with updates available from \l {http://developer.apple.com}{Apple's
    developer website}. Xcode Tools includes Apple-modified versions of the GCC
    compiler.


    \section1 What Versions of Mac OS X are Supported?

    As of Qt 4.5, Qt supports Mac OS X versions 10.3 (for \bold{deployment
    only}, not for development), 10.4 and 10.5. It is usually in the best
    interest of the developer and user to be running the latest updates to any
    version. We test internally against Mac OS X 10.3.9 and Mac OS X 10.4.11 as
    well as the updated release of Mac OS X 10.5.


    \section2 Carbon or Cocoa?
    
    Historically, Qt has used the Carbon toolkit, which supports 32-bit
    applications on Mac OS X 10.3 and up. Qt 4.5 adds support for the Cocoa
    toolkit, which requires 10.5 and provides 64-bit support.

    This detail is typically not important to Qt application developers.  Qt is
    cross-platform across Carbon and Cocoa, and Qt applications behave
    the same way when configured for either one. Eventually, the Carbon
    version will be discontinued. This is something to keep in mind when you
    consider writing code directly against native APIs.

    The current binary for Qt is built for Carbon. If you want to choose which
    framework Qt will use, you must build from scratch. Carbon or Cocoa is
    chosen when configuring the package for building. The configure process
    selects Carbon by default, to specify Cocoa use the \c{-cocoa} flag.
    configure for a 64-bit architecture using one of the \c{-arch} flags (see
    \l{universal binaries}{Universal Binaries}).

    Currently, Apple's GCC 4.0.1 is used by default. When building on 10.5,
    Apple's GCC 4.2 is also available and selectable with the configure flag:
    \c{-platform macx-g++42}. GCC 3.x will \e not work. Experimental LLVM-GCC
    support is available by passing in the \c{-platform macx-llvm} flag.

    The following table summarizes the different versions of Mac OS X and what
    capabilities are used by Qt.

    \table
        \header
            \o Mac OS X Version
            \o Cat Name
            \o Native API Used by Qt
            \o Bits available to address memory
            \o CPU Architecture Supported
            \o Development Platform
        \row
            \o 10.3
            \o Panther
            \o Carbon
            \o 32
            \o PPC
            \o No
        \row
            \o 10.4
            \o Tiger
            \o Carbon