As a developer coming from a Windows background, I'd always find the different Powertoys and Sysinternals apps as invaluable tools in aiding programming. Is there something similar for a developer to watch for in the Mac world?
+3
A:
A lot of those types of tools are included with the Mac OS, and some are available separately from Apple.
There's no Mac equivalent of the registry - everything goes in the file system somewhere - and you can use fs_usage to watch that. In a terminal:
sudo fs_usage
Check out Instruments, part of the Apple developer tools distribution.
stevex
2009-01-07 14:37:33
Not entirely true -- OSX inherits the netinfo database from NextStep which is similar in some ways to the registry.
Adam Lassek
2009-01-07 14:42:03
Instruments looks awesome, how do I run it?
Abdullah Jibaly
2009-01-07 14:55:51
Thanks for 'fs_usage'. I had read Amit Singh OSX internals, and couldn't remember what it was.
Jonathan
2009-01-07 15:41:30
Instruments can be run from within Xcode: in the Run menu goto the Start with Performance Tool, and anything under Instruments Templates will run Instruments. It can also be found in /Developer/Applications.
Nathan Kinsinger
2009-01-08 00:08:24
A:
Not as such. Some of the Powertoys implement features that are built-in to the OS, some are available as various utility programs.
As for Sysinternals, there are quite a lot of them. If you want specifics I'd need a better idea of what you use, but you could probably duplicate 90% of the functionality just from a terminal window. Learning how to use bash and the normal Unix utilities would be a very good skill to have.
Adam Lassek
2009-01-07 14:39:17
A:
Mac OS X comes with a lot of unix tools like sar, top, etc. What metrics are you looking for specifically?
neesh
2009-01-07 14:42:57
Some of the Powertoys I use are Open Command Window Here and Image Resizer, and DiskMon and Process Explorer + AutoRuns for Sysinternals.
Abdullah Jibaly
2009-01-07 14:51:55