
Alcatraz – Package manager for Xcode 5 - mneorr
http://alcatraz.io
======
Argorak
Um. Don't run the installation instructions.

While the download itself is served using https (from amazon), curl will
contact the google url shortener using HTTP. Honestly, if I wanted to MITM one
thing on any network, URL shorteners would come first.

Edit: The website switched from googles link shortener to git.io (http) and
download to github downloads. git.io's https version seems to have certificate
issues.

    
    
        > curl https://git.io/lOQWeA -vvv
        ...
        * SSL certificate problem: Invalid certificate chain
        ...

~~~
drtse4
If someone is wondering, the short url points to the latest release tgz, at
the moment to
[https://github.com/supermarin/Alcatraz/releases/download/1.0...](https://github.com/supermarin/Alcatraz/releases/download/1.0.1/Alcatraz.tar.gz)

~~~
Argorak
Yep. The original post contained the links, but fell through the spam filter
;).

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guptaneil
The first thing that stuck out to me was the name and logo. Alcatraz sounds
cool (and I like the logo), but I'm not sure if something that evokes imagery
of being confined and locked up is what you want associated with an open-
source package manager.

~~~
josteink
_I 'm not sure if something that evokes imagery of being confined and locked
up_

Given that it's for Xcode, the one dev-tool to rule them all, in the walled
garden where Apple has all the keys, I think it fits perfectly.

~~~
joeblau
Yeah, I would agree except that AppCode does Xcodes job a lot better than
Xcode.

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nextstep
Very nice! I've been following this for some time and am very happy to see
this stable release!

An aside: Has anyone tried the Clang Formatter plugin? I want to format
property declarations like:

    
    
      @property (nonatomic, strong) NSString *string;

But setting 'ObjCSpaceAfterProperty' to true or false both output:

    
    
      @property(nonatomic, strong) NSString *string;
    

My format config is based off llvm's. Maybe some other configuration is
stomping on the 'ObjCSpaceAfterProperty: true'?

(Does anyone have a .clang-format file that that matches Apple's style?)

~~~
LegNeato
I actually wrote that patch! Are you sure you are using a version of clang
with support for it? As far as I know a new release hasn't been cut with the
included patch. At Facebook we use clang-format with that patch and it works.

I should note that Alcatraz's clang plugin looks to have a compiled version of
an old clang-format in the tree...that's likely why this doesn't work with
that plugin.

~~~
nextstep
Thank you! That was causing my issue.

Thanks for adding that ObjC option.

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k-mcgrady
What are your reasons for starting another package management system when we
already have CocoaPods? What does this offer over CocoaPods beside the UI?

~~~
alloy
Alcatraz manages ‘Xcode packages’, e.g. Xcode plugins and color schemes.
CocoaPods manages dependencies of your Objective-C project.

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HaloZero
I've been using this and it works great for the packages it has, I don't use
too many but if you document your xcode methods I highly recommend
VVDocumenter.

It allows you to generate a doc string for a method if you type '///'

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eddieroger
This looks really cool, but I don't know what problem it's solving for me.
Maybe I'm not an Xcode hacker/ninja/whatever, but it has constantly met my
needs as-is. Sure, I've wanted to add a color scheme before, but these are a
lot of hoops to jump through when Dusk is fine.

~~~
jurre
There are a lot of really great plugins for Xcode, you should browse the
package repository to get an idea of what's out there :)

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orta
A huge congrats, I've been working with Alcatraz HEAD for a while, with
helping out with the design, and occasionally wanting to make my own plugins.

I'm super excited to see it out and one-click installable again. Looking
forwards to seeing what Marin/Delisa/Jurre do with the blog.

I use this regularly, it's not felt any less stable for the few plugins I use
mainly; open in github, one in appcode & fuzzy string matcher. They really
make Xcode easier for day to day life.

~~~
rafifyalda
A colleague of mine wrote that Open in Github plugin when we worked together -
it's incredibly useful if your code's hosted there and you do pull-request
code reviews.

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eridius
Xcode doesn't have a public plugin API. Every single one of these packages,
including Alcatraz itself, is relying on undocumented and unsupported
functionality. I would very strongly caution against installing _any_ of it.

~~~
jurre
Apple has reached out to plug-in developers and implemented a compatibility
UUID system for plugins. What exactly are you worried might happen?

~~~
eridius
No, Apple gave up and implemented a compatibility UUID system to try and
reduce crashes (since any Xcode crash is going to be reported to Apple and
Xcode engineers have to figure out what happened, which means Xcode engineers
get bug reports triggered by unsupported third-party plugins).

The existence of the compatibility UUID does _not_ mean that Apple has blessed
plugins. They're just trying to reduce their support load, and reduce their
users' crashes at the same time.

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redshirtrob
I really want to use this, but I'm having a lot of trouble with the interface.
It could just be me or my environment. I don't know.

Are you planning to have a forum somewhere for feedback and support? I suppose
I could open an issue on Github, but I'd really rather just ask a question.
Enough people seem to be using this that I suspect the problem is on my end.

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accatyyc
Wow! Thank you for this. In 5 minutes I found 5 plugins I had no idea existed
but truly brightens my day. Keep up the good work!

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bib971
Just curious, how to implement the scrolling effect like this site? Does it
require JavaScript or just CSS?

~~~
imissmyjuno
It's not an answer to you directly but more of an observation: The effect for
this page is very laggy on a 1-year old MBP, and makes the text barely
readable until a certain scrolling point is reached. I do not understand the
purpose of using the effect here or in 9/10 cases I see it on sites. It
introduces pointless visual candy with usually zero or negative practical
benefit. Makes me think of the DHTML days.

~~~
mneorr
unfortunately we wrote it on an Macbook Air, where it worked pretty good. It
lags horribly on an MBP retina, we might fix that

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theswan
Interesting that just a little bit ago there was an article on software
installation security (albeit from a different angle).

Theoretically speaking, is it safe to curl and install something via plain
[http://](http://) and no checksum verification?

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wsc981
Very nice tool, though it seems the installation of ClangFormat[0] fails
somehow. I guess I'll try to install it manually.

[0]: [https://github.com/travisjeffery/ClangFormat-
Xcode](https://github.com/travisjeffery/ClangFormat-Xcode)

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eliperkins
As someone who spends most of their day in Xcode, Alcatraz is an invaluable
tool to grooming my Xcode setup and keeping up with the latest plugins and
what not.

Congrats on the launch Marin! Been following the repo for a few months now,
I'm really digging the design.

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tempire
Not sure why this was posted, when the pre-built version doesn't work on
10.9.1. It doesn't properly detect that command line tools are installed.

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danielrakh
I think it's awesome. A part of me wishes there was a drop down summary of
each plugin when you click on it, rather than heading to the github link.

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chrisdevereux
How stable do people generally find Xcode plugins?

The few I've tried haven't been great (they've tended to crash a lot and break
with Xcode updates)

~~~
brodney
I've been using XVim for over a year now and it's been reasonably stable. They
have an issue with code folding but then I don't fold while the plugin is
enabled.

~~~
weaksauce
Fwiw. Folding shouldn't (big shouldn't) crash it but navigation is not like
vim is.(the cursor is hidden inside the fold while you do navigation stuff. It
eventually moves out of the fold though. It's on my list of things to fix with
xvim.

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jevinskie
Is there a plugin to use vim mode or emacs mode comments? Tabs vs spaces and
tab length consistency are big annoyances at my company.

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kerbs
Crashes XCode for me when entering the package manager.

I work for TheMan® (with Firewall) and assuming it is due to some non-http
ports being used?

~~~
jurre
What OSX are you on? We're 10.9 only since we're using NSURLSession

~~~
kerbs
Ah, doh! 10.8 :(

#EnterpriseLife

~~~
mneorr
we will consider bringing it back to 10.8, just after this all launch thing is
over

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biot
Are the plugins run in any kind of sandbox? Is there any security review
performed on plugins other users submit?

~~~
lstamour
Apple doesn't sanction Xcode plugins and I'm pretty sure Xcode itself isn't
sandboxed once you enter your developer password. I'm not sure of the details
though.

As to the security review or process, perhaps badging -- that sounds like a
good feature request. I'll bet there's an issue tracker... ;-)

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yohann305
Now, add a price field, and sir, you got yourself a sustainable business!

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bound008
YES! It's back!

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ahmadeus
Great work, now the next big thing is to mix this with Cocoapods to that once
you select a package, it does the pod install command for you automatically
and you are good to go.

~~~
kattrali
Alcatraz isn't a CocoaPods wrapper, it is an installer for Xcode
customizations like plugins and color schemes. You can use it to install a
CocoaPods Xcode plugin to handle installing and updating pods though:
[https://github.com/kattrali/cocoapods-xcode-
plugin](https://github.com/kattrali/cocoapods-xcode-plugin)

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yohann305
OMG! It's like "XCode on Rails"!

At last!

