X¶

Xcode¶

Xcode is an integrated development environment (IDE) containing a suite of software development tools developed by Apple for developing software for macOS, iOS, WatchOS and tvOS. First released in 2003, the latest stable release is version 8 and is available via the Mac App Store free of charge for OS X El Capitan users. Registered developers can download preview releases and prior versions of the suite through the Apple Developer website. However, Apple recently made a beta version of version 8.0 of the software available to those of the public with Apple Developer accounts.

Xcode supports source code for the programming languages C, C++, Objective-C, Objective-C++, Java, AppleScript, Python, Ruby, ResEdit (Rez), and Swift, with a variety of programming models, including but not limited to Cocoa, Carbon, and Java. Third parties have added support for GNU Pascal, Free Pascal, Ada, C#, Perl, and D.

Thanks to the Mach-O executable format, which allows fat binary files, containing code for multiple architectures, Xcode can build universal binary files, which allow software to run on both PowerPC and Intel-based (x86) platforms and that can include both 32-bit and 64-bit code for both architectures. Using the iOS SDK, Xcode can also be used to compile and debug applications for iOS that run on ARM architecture processors. Xcode includes the GUI tool Instruments, which runs atop a dynamic tracing framework, DTrace, created by Sun Microsystems and released as part of OpenSolaris.

XFS¶

XFS is a high-performance 64-bit journaling file system created by Silicon Graphics, Inc (SGI) in 1993. It was the default file system in the SGI’s IRIX operating system starting with its version 5.3; the file system was ported to the Linux kernel in 2001. As of June 2014, XFS is supported by most Linux distributions, some of which use it as the default file system.

XFS excels in the execution of parallel input/output (I/O) operations due to its design, which is based on allocation groups (a type of subdivision of the physical volumes in which XFS is used- also shortened to AGs). Because of this, XFS enables extreme scalability of I/O threads, file system bandwidth, and size of files and of the file system itself when spanning multiple physical storage devices.

XFS ensures the consistency of data by employing metadata journaling and supporting write barriers. Space allocation is performed via extents with data structures stored in B+ trees, improving the overall performance of the file system, especially when handling large files. Delayed allocation assists in the prevention of file system fragmentation; online defragmentation is also supported. A feature unique to XFS is the pre-allocation of I/O bandwidth at a pre-determined rate, which is suitable for many real-time applications; however, this feature was supported only on IRIX, and only with specialized hardware.

A notable XFS user, NASA Advanced Supercomputing Division, takes advantage of these capabilities deploying two 300+ terabyte XFS filesystems on two SGI Altix archival storage servers, each of which is directly attached to multiple Fibre Channel disk arrays.