Project Builder was an

integrated development environment An integrated development environment (IDE) is a Application software, software application that provides comprehensive facilities for software development. An IDE normally consists of at least a source-code editor, build automation tools, an ...

(IDE) originally developed by

NeXT NeXT, Inc. (later NeXT Computer, Inc. and NeXT Software, Inc.) was an American technology company headquartered in Redwood City, California that specialized in computer workstations for higher education and business markets, and later develope ...

for version 3 of the

NeXTSTEP NeXTSTEP is a discontinued object-oriented, multitasking operating system based on the Mach kernel and the UNIX-derived BSD. It was developed by NeXT, founded by Steve Jobs, in the late 1980s and early 1990s and was initially used for its ...

operating system An operating system (OS) is system software that manages computer hardware and software resources, and provides common daemon (computing), services for computer programs. Time-sharing operating systems scheduler (computing), schedule tasks for ...

by separating out the code editing parts of Interface Builder into its own application. After

Apple Computer Apple Inc. is an American multinational corporation and technology company headquartered in Cupertino, California, in Silicon Valley. It is best known for its consumer electronics, software, and services. Founded in 1976 as Apple Computer Co ...

purchased NeXT and turned NeXTSTEP into the

Mac OS X macOS, previously OS X and originally Mac OS X, is a Unix, Unix-based operating system developed and marketed by Apple Inc., Apple since 2001. It is the current operating system for Apple's Mac (computer), Mac computers. With ...

operating system, the NeXTSTEP version of Project Builder became ProjectBuilderWO (maintained only for

WebObjects WebObjects is a discontinued Java web application server and a server-based web application framework originally developed by NeXT Software, Inc. WebObject's hallmark features are its object-orientation, database connectivity, and prototy ...

development). Apple created a new Project Builder from scratch for

software development Software development is the process of designing and Implementation, implementing a software solution to Computer user satisfaction, satisfy a User (computing), user. The process is more encompassing than Computer programming, programming, wri ...

with the first version being introduced with Developer Preview 4 of Mac OS X. This version of Project Builder, informally dubbed PBX. was distributed with the first few versions of Mac OS X but with the release of Mac OS X v10.3 it was redesigned, reintegrated with Interface Builder and rebranded as

Xcode Xcode is a suite of developer tools for building apps on Apple devices. It includes an integrated development environment (IDE) of the same name for macOS, used to develop software for macOS, iOS, iPadOS, watchOS, tvOS, and visionOS. It w ...

. Before OS X, developers could use

Macintosh Programmer's Workshop Macintosh Programmer's Workshop (MPW) is a software development environment for the Classic Mac OS operating system, written by Apple Computer. For Macintosh developers, it was one of the primary tools for building applications for System 7.x an ...

or CodeWarrior to develop Macintosh applications.

GNUstep GNUstep is a free software implementation of the Cocoa (formerly OpenStep) Objective-C frameworks, widget toolkit, and application development tools for Unix-like operating systems and Microsoft Windows. It is part of the GNU Project. GNUst ...

's ProjectCenter IDE is a rough workalike of the original NextStep design; additional functionality is provided by ProjectManager, a 3rd-party GNUstep IDE meant for greater usability.

References

{{Mac-stub MacOS NeXT