I’m developing a system which will have a PC (windows) component and an iPad component. I’d like to share some C++ code between the iPad and the PC. Is there a way to automatically sync the source files between the project? In other words, if I’m working on the PC and add a new .h/.cpp pair, can I somehone get the xcode project to recognize the new files and add them to the xcode project? Same goes for getting Visual Studio to recognize new files on the PC end.
If this isn’t possible, would it make sense to use Eclipse on both the Mac and the PC for this shared library? Is there any other option I should look in to for maintaining a project on both Apple and Windows development environments?
First, you need one common build configuration for all your target platforms. Of course, this means that you can’t use the build configurations tied to your IDEs (Visual Studio, XCode, etc.). You need a cross-platform build-system. The best candidate for that, IMO, is CMake. With that system, the CMakeLists.txt files are the primary configuration files for your project. Any new source files / headers will have to be added to that configuration file (or one of them). It might be a little bit less convenient than using the in-IDE facilities to add a header/source pair, but the advantage is that you only have to add the source file once to the build configuration (CMakeLists.txt) and it will apply to all operating systems and IDEs that you are using. CMake can be used to generate project files for most IDEs so that they can be used easily, and some of the better IDEs also support CMake build-configurations directly (which makes it even more convenient). Personally, I don’t know of any serious cross-platform project that does not employ an independent cross-platform build-system (like CMake or others with similar capabilities), so this is not really much of a debate anymore.
Second, you need a means to synchronize your files between the two systems, which I presume are physically separated (i.e., not in a virtual box or whatever). There are simple programs like rsync and other more GUI-ish programs to synchronize folders and all its underlying files. However, for source code, it is much more convenient to use a version-control system. Personally, I recommend Git, especially for personal projects. There are many features to a version control system, but the basic thing is that it gives you a simple way to keep source folders synchronized and keep track of the changes that have been made to the code (e.g., allowing to back-track if a bug suddenly appears out of the latest changes). Even if you are working alone, it is still totally worth it to use such a system (and even if you don’t really need it, it gives you experience working with one). Git is a decentralized system, meaning that you don’t need a central server for the version control, it is all local to each copy of the repository. This allows you to have (as I do for some simple projects), a completely local set of repositories, for instance, I have two computers I work with, with a copy of the repository on each of them, plus a copy of the repository on an external hard-drive, so all the synchronization is done locally between the computers and external drive (with the added bonus of a constantly up-to-date triple backup of everything). You can also use a central server, such as github, which is even more convenient.