History of Xcode

This history of Xcode presents the timeline of development and release of Apple Inc.'s Xcode software development suite.
Like Mac OS X itself, Xcode had its roots in technology from NeXT. Prior to the 24 October 2003 release of Mac OS X v10.3, Apple referred to the suite of tools as Developer Tools. The Xcode integrated development environment (IDE) was developed from and superseded Apple's earlier IDE, Project Builder.
1.x series
Xcode 1.0 was released in fall 2003. Xcode 1.0 was based on Project Builder, but had an updated UI, ZeroLink, Fix & Continue, distributed build support, and Code Sense indexing.
The next significant release, Xcode 1.5, had better code completion and a better debugger.
2.x series
Xcode 2.0 was released with Mac OS X v10.4 "Tiger". It included the Quartz Composer visual programming language, better Code Sense indexing for Java, and Ant support. It also included the Apple Reference Library tool, which lets you search and read online documentation from Apple’s website and local documentation installed on your machine.
Xcode 2.1 could create universal binaries. It supported Shared Precompiled Headers, unit testing targets, conditional breakpoints, and watchpoints. It also had better dependency analysis.
3.x series
Xcode 3.0 was released with Mac OS X v10.5 "Leopard". Notable changes since 2.1 include the DTrace debugging tool (now called Instruments), refactoring support, context-sensitive documentation, and Objective-C 2.0 with garbage collection. It also supports Project Snapshots, which provide a basic form of version control; Message Bubbles, which show build errors debug values alongside code; and building four-architecture fat binaries (32 and 64-bit Intel and PowerPC).
Xcode 3.1 was an update release of the developer tools for Mac OS X, and was the same version included with the iPhone SDK. It could target non-Mac OS X platforms, including iPhone OS 2.0. It included the GCC 4.2 and LLVM GCC 4.2 compilers.
Xcode 3.2 was released with Mac OS X v10.6 "Snow Leopard", and won't install on any earlier version of Mac OS X. It supports static analysis. Official support for targetting iPhone OSes earlier than 3.0 was dropped. But in fact, it is still possible to target older iPhone OSes, and the simulator supports iPhone OS 2.0 through 3.1. Another new feature since Xcode 3.1 is that Xcode's SCM support now supports Subversion 1.5.
List of release dates
* Xcode 1.0: fall 2003.
* Xcode 1.0.1: November 2003.
* Xcode 1.1: December 2003.
* Xcode 1.2: April 2004.
* Xcode 1.5: August 2004.
* Xcode 2.0: 29 April 2005.
* Xcode 2.1: 6 June 2005.
* Xcode 2.2: 10 November 2005.
* Xcode 2.2.1: 10 January 2006.
* Xcode 2.3: 23 May 2006.
* Xcode 2.4: 7 August 2006.
* Xcode 2.4.1: 1 November 2006.
* Xcode 2.5: 31 October 2007.
* Xcode 3.0: 26 October 2007.
* Xcode 3.1: 11 July 2008.
* Xcode 3.1.1: 12 September 2008.
* Xcode 3.1.2: 24 November 2008.
* Xcode 3.1.3: 17 June 2009.
* Xcode 3.1.4: 10 September 2009.
* Xcode 3.2: 28 August 2009.
* Xcode 3.2.1: 28 August 2009.

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