Revision as of 10:03, 16 July 2011

This page is about configuring XCode (Mac) or Visual C++ (Windows) so that it will compile plugins for FileMaker.

Taking either the FileMaker Plugin example, or one of the sample templates provided by other plugin developers and getting it to compile so that it will load in FileMaker Client.

Initial Configuration

Changes to make to compile the plugin and make any other initial setup changes.

XCode on OS X Lion

Mac OS X Lion no longer supports legacy PowerPC applications via Rosetta. In addition, Xcode 4 no longer uses the GCC compiler. Because it may be desired to continue to support FileMaker on PowerPC, it is necessary to use the GCC 4.0 compiler.

XCode 4

The following link explains how to re-enable the GCC 4.0 compiler, which is necessary to compile FileMaker Plugins. 10.4 sdk support to XCode

XCode 3

You can use Xcode 3.2.5 on Mac OS X Lion. Simply make sure you install XCode before updating to Lion, and it will continue to work.

The first time you run XCode 3.2, you will be asked to install the JAVA environment. Select to install and away you go.

Clean Install : When you install XCode 3.2 on a clean install of Lion, it doesn't install all the files - including the XCode application itself.

Therefore :

• use the ditto command line to copy XCode 3.2 from a 10.6 installation
• eg. sudo ditto /Volumes/10.6/Developer /Developer

Note : Using the Finder to copy the folder doesn't work. Nor does the command line cp -R

Microsoft Visual C++

When attempting to compile the plugin on Windows using Microsoft Visual C++ Studio, I found I needed to download and install VS SDK for Windows.

This can be downloaded for free from www.microsoft.com

Adding Version Info to Windows Plugin

By default, the FM 7 API doesn't add the 'Version' information to the compiled plugin on windows. You can include this by copying from the FM5.5 API the Version Info Adding Windows Version Info

Note : Windows vista, 7 or 2008 Server will only show version information for .exe's or .dll's. There doesn't appear to be a way to display version information for other file types, such as FileMaker Plugins

Plugin Function Definition in one File

By default, the FM 7 API requires you to define each Function Definition in multiple files. This means duplication on Mac & Windows. It is possible to modify the main FMExample_Plugin.cpp file to include the definitions all in the one file, removing the duplication. Function Definition