Heads up: OS X 10.7 (Lion) requires Xcode 4.1 Update

A heads up to OS X and iOS developers: if you were planning to upgrade to OS X 10.7 right away, or already have, be sure to also to download the new version of Xcode. As many people know, Xcode 4.1 is needed to develop applications for OS X 10.7 (Lion). However, what was not so obvious (to me at least) is that Xcode 4.0.x will not work at all on Lion – it won’t even open. So even if you’re only developing iOS apps, you’ll still need to update Xcode.

Good news is that Xcode is now a free download through the App Store. Bad news is that it’s a sizeable download (just under 3 GB) and it took a disproportionally long time to download. In my case, I ended up leaving it to download overnight, and when I got up this morning, the download had failed to complete. Fortunately, I was able to resume the download, and then it finished up quickly and installed.

So, if (when) you upgrade to Lion, you’ll probably want to hop on over to the App Store and download the new version of Xcode first. Or make that the very next thing you do after installing OS X 10.7 and make sure you have some development time to spare while you download the update.

Happy coding!

Leave a Reply

Your email address will not be published.

top