Jailbreak Development Tools

From iPhone Development Wiki

The first step in developing for jailbroken devices (this includes MobileSubstrate extensions, or "tweaks") is understanding the commonly-used development tools.

iOS Build Environment for Windows

A build environment is available for those who want to develop and compile iOS programs on Windows computers. See here:

iOS Build Environment by Pierre-Marie Baty - suitable for Windows XP, Vista and 7.

It can build apps for iOS 3 onwards, making it suitable for iPhone, iPods and iPads. The binaries are iOS 4 compatible. Sample projects (available for free separately) include:

  • A basic UIKit Hello World application (download: HelloWorld.zip)
  • A basic OpenGL rotating cube (download: GLCube.zip)
  • A system-wide Settings.app bundle (download: SambaSettings.zip)
  • A SBSettings toggle (download: smbtoggle.zip)
  • (coming soon) a better, commented port of ID Software's Wolfenstein 3D using spatialized audio, OpenGL ES, the accelerometer and MD2 models.

These projects are written in C and Objective-C and contain lots of comments useful to new developers. Also provided are automatic Makefiles that link against all available frameworks.

Theos: Build System

Not to be confused with a toolchain or SDK, Theos helps create and manage projects. Theos:

  • Creates new empty projects based on templates (see NIC, below)
  • Handles Makefiles for your build environment
  • Automates packaging (to .deb) and installation

NIC (New Instance Creator)

The New Instance Creator is a script, included with Theos, that creates empty projects for you to use as starting points for your development.

An example of how NIC is used can be found here.

Logos

Logos is a preprocessor that aids in MobileSubstrate extension development. It allows you to define hooks with a clear, readable syntax.

Logify

Unlike the tools listed above, Logify isn't a tool you would use throughout a project's life cycle. Logify accepts a class header and generates a MobileSubstrate extension which hooks all of that class's methods, printing log messages when they are called. This helps a hook developer see when certain methods are invoked during use.