In working on Tap.Tools, Jamoma, etc. I’ve developed a workflow which is very good for me but that I believe is a bit different from what most others making Max externals are doing. I thought I’d share it.

Prerequisite: my text editor of choice for the last year or so has been TextMate. For one thing it is really gentle on my eyes (as opposed to Xcode which seems to have the effect of looking directly at a laser). It has really good syntax highlighting, auto-complete, etc. The undo history is great, and the copy-paste clipboard is kept as a history (so you can see everything you’ve copied during your work session and choose what to paste). As mentioned in the blog yesterday, it also has a built-in SVN client. Etc.

1. Duplicate an existing project, like ‘circle’
2. Rename files (i.e. circle.c —> foo.c)
3. Drag the .xcodeproj onto the TextMate icon (a drawer with the inner files will display)
4. Do a search and replace (i.e. replace every ‘circle’ with ‘foo’)
5. Save it; close it
6. Now open the source file(s) with TextMate and work away. To compile it use Command-B. There is no shortcut for clean, though I think you modify this somehow (it is in the Bundles menu somewhere).

Then you only have to burn out your eye sockets when debugging in Xcode :-)