The code you write to program with the open source toolchain is exactly the same as with the official SDK, as long as you use the SDK headers, frameworks and libraries. You should be able to get started with a Windows or Linux computer and a jailbroken device.

I’ll argue that going this route will make you a better iPhone developer, because you’ll learn how to program your UI from scratch, instead of being spoiled by Interface Builder. 😉

if I start a project using the open source SDk, how easy is it to transfer it to the official SDK, should I decide to do so? Thanks!

but, unfortunately i failed. Contacting with saurik, he just told me that the toolchain will work, but don’t tell me how to make it work. i feel sad, and i am really disappointed because he didn reply my Email anymore

Try the 1.2 SDK headers.

svn co http://iphone-dev.googlecode.com/svn/branches/include-1.2-sdk

Sorry for the confusion. It’s been a while since I wrote that HelloWorld example. Notice in the comment header that it’s dated August 2008.

However, that placed all the relevant headers in /usr/local/arm-apple-darwin/include instead of /usr/local/iphone-sysroot/usr/include

So I copied ..darwin/include/* to iphone-sysroot/usr/include

Now your HelloWorldiPhone example has a lot less compile errors, but I still get:

HelloWorld.m:15: error: too many arguments to function ‘UIApplicationMain’

I wonder if your toolchain download and the iPhone-dev team’s header files are incompatible?

thanks again!
L.

It seems I forgot a step in using the iPhone-dev team’s header files. You need to provide the location to the Mac OS X 10.4 SDK (the 10.4 SDK that comes with plain XCode 3.1 should be fine). I’ve amended the blog post with the details.

On the other hard, if you’re going to go through the trouble of obtaining 10.4 SDK files, you may as well just get the official SDK files.

I’ve downloaded everything and gave ‘make’ a try (on a linux (Ubuntu) sstem). I got the include files from the iPhone-dev team SVN repository, but it seems that there are some files missing (or at least not corresponding to your sample code).

Here are the first few compilation errors:

/usr/local/bin/arm-apple-darwin9-gcc -c -I/usr/local/lib/gcc/arm-apple-darwin9/4.2.1/include -isysroot /usr/local/iphone-sysroot HelloWorld.m -o HelloWorld.o
HelloWorld.m:9:34: error: Foundation/Foundation.h: No such file or directory
In file included from HelloWorld.m:10:
/usr/local/iphone-sysroot/usr/include/UIKit/UIKit.h:3:38: error: CoreGraphics/CoreGraphics.h: No such file or directory
/usr/local/iphone-sysroot/usr/include/UIKit/UIKit.h:4:42: error: CoreFoundation/CoreFoundation.h: No such file or directory

I don’t have a Foundation directory in iphone-sysroot/usr/include, nor a CoreGraphics.

I suppose I should try getting the includes from the SDK directly?

Thanks for all this!!!
Luis.

What did you use to unpack the toolchain on Windows? I’m afraid WinZip and WinRAR don’t support symlinks. Try from the cygwin command line:

cd /

tar xzf /path/to/toolchain.tgz