How do I use Mogenerator?

Question

I installed Mogenerator. Now what do I do? How do I use it?

The first problem I have is that I have no idea where it was installed to. During the install process, it only let me select the hard drive to install it on, not the directory. The most natural location would be the Applications folder, but it isn't there.

Next, the readme (which I found online) states:

Xmo'd works by noticing when your *.xcdatamodel is saved. If the model file's Xcode project item comment contains xmod, an AppleScript is fired that creates a folder based on your model's file name and populates it with derived source code files from your model. It then adds the new folder to your project as a Group Reference and adds all the source files to your project.

There are several issues with the above statement that aren't clear:

• What does "the model file's Xcode project item comment" refer to? How can I make it contain "xmod"?
• Is adding this comment and having mogenerator monitor the .xcdatamodel file the only way to use mogenerator? Is there any way I can manually run mogenerator so that it recreates the generated files?

Answer 1

mogenerator is a script that is installed into your developer directory as I recall. However it might be installed into the Xcode scripts directory under your ~/Library.

What do you mean by manually triggering the application? You can trigger a build by "touching" the data model. Any save on the data model will trigger the build

In Xcode if you select the model file and hit ⌘I you will get its metadata. Click on the comments tab and add xmod there. mogenerator looks for that comment to know if it should generate files.

Update

You can run mogenerator from the command line as well as have it monitor your files. Type mogenerator --help in the Terminal to see the options.

Answer 2

I searched my hard drive and found the following files:

The application is installed to: /usr/bin/mogenerator.

The /Library/Application Support/mogenerator/ directory contains some .motemplate files.

Answer 3

One more caveat to be aware of: You have to already the Class properties of your entities to something different than NSManagedObject. Otherwise Xmo'd won't do anything.