• Frequently Asked Questions
• General Questions
• What languages are supported?
• What code is PLBlocks based on?
• Will PLBlocks conflict with Apple's block support in Snow Leopard?
• iPhone Development
• Will PLBlocks conflict with any official block support for the iPhone?
• Can we use blocks in shipping iPhoneOS 3.0 applications?
• Does PLBlocks use Private APIs?

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Frequently Asked Questions

General Questions

• What languages are supported?

Currently only Objective-C is supported. Support for C and C++ is available in the 1.1 beta releases.

• What code is PLBlocks based on?

PLBlocks is based on the GCC and Runtime code as released by Apple. Apple's GCC source drops are available here. The block runtime can be found in LLVM's subversion repository.

• Will PLBlocks conflict with Apple's block support in Snow Leopard?

A binary built with PLBlocks for the Leopard (10.5) SDK will run on Snow Leopard (10.6).

The custom toolchain included with PLBlocks explicitly uses prefixed symbol names for all runtime dependencies. However, if you'd like to target the 10.6 SDK, you currently must use Apple's official compiler. Future releases of the PLBlocks runtime will add support for targeting the 10.6 SDK using the PLBlocks compiler.

iPhone Development

• Will PLBlocks conflict with any official block support for the iPhone?

When Apple includes block support in a future release of iPhone OS, your existing binaries will continue to work, and you may simply switch your project's compiler setting back to Apple's GCC.

To avoid conflict with Apple's blocks runtime, the custom toolchain included with PLBlocks explicitly uses custom, prefixed symbol names for all runtime dependencies.

• Can we use blocks in shipping iPhoneOS 3.0 applications?

Yes. PLBlocks is included in quite a few shipping applications.

• Does PLBlocks use Private APIs?

Neither the block runtime or the compiler call any private Apple APIs, or otherwise rely on undocumented vendor library functionality.