MPW version 3.5

Macintosh Programmer's Workshop or MPW, is a software development environment for the Classic Mac OS, written by Apple Computer. For Macintosh developers, it was one of the primary tools for building applications for System 7.x and Mac OS 8.x and 9.x. Initially, MPW was sold as a commercial product but Apple eventually made it a free download. MPW can still be used to develop Mac OS X applications but only as a Carbon build for PowerPC. To develop Mac OS X applications based on other technologies, one must use either Xcode or CodeWarrior. MPW also included a version control system called Projector; this has been superceded by CVS and is no longer supported in Mac OS X. Image File history File links Download high resolution version (832x624, 66 KB) Summary Screenshot of MPW version 3. ... Image File history File links Download high resolution version (832x624, 66 KB) Summary Screenshot of MPW version 3. ... Mac OS, which stands for Macintosh Operating System, is a range of graphical user interface-based operating systems developed by Apple Computer for the Macintosh computers. ... Apple Computer, Inc. ... The first Macintosh computer, introduced in 1984. ... Mac OS X is the operating system which is included with all shipping Apple Macintosh computers in the consumer and professional markets. ... Carbon is the codename of Apple Computers APIs for the Macintosh operating system, which permits a good degree of backward compatibility between source code written to run on the classic Mac OS, and the newer Mac OS X. The APIs are published and accessed in the form of C... Xcode is Apple Computers integrated development environment (IDE) for developing applications and other software for Mac OS X. It is shipped free with Mac OS X. First introduced on October 24, 2003 along with the release of Mac OS X v10. ... CodeWarrior is an integrated development environment for the Macintosh, Microsoft Windows, Linux, and embedded systems. ... Revision control is an aspect of documentation control wherein changes to documents are identified by incrementing an associated number or letter code, termed the revision level, or simply revision. It has been a standard practice in the maintenance of engineering drawings for as long as the generation of such drawings... Projectors are used for displaying an image on a projection screen or similar surface for the view of an audience. ... The Concurrent Versions System (CVS), also known as the Concurrent Versioning System, implements a version control system: it keeps track of all work and all changes in a set of files, typically the implementation of a software project, and allows several (potentially widely separated) developers to collaborate. ...

MPW provided a command line environment which included Pascal, C and C++ compilers. The shell environment is somewhat similar to Unix shells in design, but is designed around the Macintosh's character set and GUI, replacing the usual terminal environment with a "worksheet" interface, allowing the user to select and run arbitrary sections of a shell script or to redo commands with no retyping. In addition, command line tools were commonly provided with a somewhat standardized graphical interface called Commando that provided limited access to the command line capabilities of the program. The debuggers were not integrated into MPW like most IDEs of today but the language compilers supported the symbolic debugging information file format used by the debugger. Pascal is an imperative computer programming language, developed in 1970 by Niklaus Wirth as a language particularly suitable for structured programming. ... The C Programming Language, Brian Kernighan and Dennis Ritchie, the original edition that served for many years as an informal specification of the language The C programming language is a standardized imperative computer programming language developed in the early 1970s by Dennis Ritchie for use on the Unix operating system. ... C++ (pronounced see plus plus, IPA: /siː pləs pləs/) is a general-purpose computer programming language. ... A Unix shell, also called the command line, provides the traditional user interface for the Unix operating system. ... Gui is short for Guilherme or Guilhermo or an iteration of that, in English it translates to Will. ... An integrated development environment (IDE) (also known as an integrated design environment and integrated debugging environment) is computer software to help computer programmers develop software. ...

Apple's compilers had some features that were not common on other platforms—for example, the Pascal compiler was object-oriented, while the C and C++ compilers included support for Pascal strings (needed for the MacOS's Pascal-oriented API). In addition, the original MPW C compiler (long since obsolete and no longer available) was known for its casual and frequently humorous error messages, a quirk not carried on by later compilers developed by Symantec (Sc/Scpp, for 68K development) and IBM (MrC/MrCpp, for PowerPC development). Pascal support was no longer provided by the mid-90s due to declining popularity of the language. Symantec Corporation (NASDAQ: SYMC), founded in 1982, is an information security company headquartered in Cupertino, California that now specializes in computer security and antivirus software. ...

MPW was always targeted to a professional audience and was seldom used by hobbyist developers due to the considerable price for the package; by the time it was made freeware it had long since been superceded by offerings from Symantec and Metrowerks, as well as Apple's own development tools inherited from NeXT and distributed for free with OS X. It was also occasionally available as a wrapper environment for third-party compilers, a practice used by both Metrowerks and Absoft among others. Apple has officially discontinued further development of MPW (it has difficulties running on recent versions of MacOS and requires the Classic environment on OS X) but does maintain a web site for the software. Metrowerks was a company that developed software development tools for various embedded, game, handheld, and desktop platforms. ...

External link

• Official MPW website