Question

In Xcode 4 (4.2), is there a way to keep the Project Navigator view open and Debug Navigator view open as well. Must a user have one or the other, but not both? And the other navigators?

Apple seems to have decided that if you want to see the debug view, you don’t want to see the files in your project. WTH? Am I getting this wrong? Did Apple Xcode UI guys even talk to developers before designing the UI for Xcode 4?

Sigh…

Answer 1

You can indeed have more navigators open at once, if you are prepared to have multiple windows open. I know it’s not exactly what you’re asking for, but for multiple display setups it’s very handy. Xcode provides “behaviors” to help automate this process if you only want certain things showing at certain times.

For example, a common pattern that developers follow is to setup a behavior for “Run starts” that opens up a new window setup for debugging. Start by creating a new tab in your main Xcode window by pressing command-T, and double-click on the tab’s title to rename is “Debug”, or whatever you like. Then drag that window out (or leave it as a tab if you like), and customise the view as required – for example, for a deb window you might have the Debug area showing at the bottom (or even covering the whole editor view), and remove the toolbar at the top by right clicking and selecting “Hide Toolbar”.

Next, go to “Xcode > Behaviors > Edit Behaviors…” and choose “Run starts” in the left panel. Check the box for “Show tab” and enter the name of your newly created tab. You can also ask that tab to automatically show the Debug Navigator, and show the debugger with variables and/or console view. If you like, you can then choose “Run completes” and show the original “tab” (window), which I’ve setup to be called “Coding”, and show the required navigator (in my case, Project Navigator).

On successfully running, Xcode will now open up your new window (or bring it to the front if it’s already open) with all the settings you left it with. On stopping, your main editor will be brought back to the front.

There are loads of useful behaviors, so I would really recommend looking through them and taking the time to setup Xcode to suit your style as best as possible. All software dictates to the user how to go about doing things, and the developers can never please everybody when they decide to change the UI. The best anybody can hope to achieve is to customise the interface as best as they can to fit their style of working. If it’s still an issue for you, you can either adapt to it, or, if possible, move to something else.

I’m not a fan of every new interface feature in Xcode, but I’ve “made it mine” with some customisations and I can still be very productive. That being said there are a lot of things that I do really like about it, and for that I can forgive it for some of the less friendly features – after all, you can’t please every user.