HowTo compile native C codes to a library for iOS development in Xcode – take Mosquitto as an exampl

HowTo compile native C codes to a library for iOS development in Xcode – take Mosquitto as an example

For iOS development, sometimes you want to use a existed native C codes for help. Objective-C is a superset of C so it’s easy to combine C codes in your Objective-C project. But for a library usage, it only support compiling C code to a static library by now.

In this tutorial, I take an open source project MQTT message broker Mosquitto as an example to demo how to compile it into a static library in Xcode.

Environments
* Xcode 4.1
* MacOSX Lion
* mosquitto 0.13

Tutorial
1. Download mosquito form <http://mosquitto.org/files/source/mosquitto-0.13.tar.gz>. Here is the whole directory structure:

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2. Create a new project by template C/C++ Library
* Choose static type

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3. Import(or just drap and drop) C codes(include .h and .c) to the project

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4. Check the “Build settings” in project

* “Base SDK” => Latest iOS
* “Architectures” => Standard(armv6 armv7)
* “Supported Platforms” should include “iphonesimulator iphoneos”

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5. Check the “Build Phases” in targets
* “Copy Headers” => Add or move(from “Project”) the header files that should be referenced to “Public”

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6. Select Scheme respectively for iOS Device and iPhone/iPad Simulator for Build(Cmd+b) and resolve the errors

* Select iOS Device will make product(.a) in …<Debug/Release>-iphoneos
* Select iPhone/iPad simulator will make product(.a) in …<Debug/Release>-iphonesimulator

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* Right-click the product name and click “Show in Finder” to locate files
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7. Now you can copy the public header files and static library to the next project you want to use it.
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