Dev:Theos/Setup

This page contains instructions for installing Theos and preparing a new project.

Requirements

 * A modern operating system (Mac OS X, iOS [jailbroken], Windows [using Cygwin], and most variants of Linux should work) with the following set of utilities:
 * curl
 * git
 * make
 * openssh
 * perl
 * python (if on Windows)
 * rsync
 * Some form of a toolchain or official SDK
 * Access to a terminal emulator and some knowledge of how to use it
 * Objective-C knowledge

More detailed explanations of these requirements are given in the next section, and are dependent on the environment you use.

For Mac OS X
Mac OS X comes with most of the necessary tools (subversion, curl, and perl) by default. You will still need compilation tools and the iOS SDK, and the easiest way to obtain both of these is by installing Xcode from the App Store.

For iOS
Dependencies:

Theos as a package depends on bash, grep, dpkg, coreutils, ldid, rsync and make, so the utilities mentioned in the requirements are automatically installed.

Install a Toolchain:

See On-device toolchains for details.

For Linux
Like OS X, most distributions come pre-packaged with the aforementioned tools. On Debian-based distros, APT can be used to install the tools like so: sudo apt-get install git perl curl

If your distro uses RPM, the process is very similar.

Retrieving SDKs
If you aren't using OS X, you must download an iOS SDK. See Retrieving SDKs for details on this.

Take the SDK and put it in $THEOS/sdks, with a folder name like iPhone7.0.sdk. As of version 0.9.523, Theos accepts multiple SDKs in that folder.

Each SDK folder should have these folders: Developer, System, usr; and these files: ResourceRules.plist, Entitlements.plist, SDKSettings.plist.

Note that if no SDKs are provided, the following error will be displayed:

On Mac OS X or Linux

 * 1) Open a terminal window.
 * 2) Choose a location for Theos to be installed. If you are unsure, a good choice is /opt/theos. export THEOS=/opt/theos
 * 3) * If you chose a location outside of your user's home directory, you will probably need to run some or all of the following commands with root permissions.
 * 4) Download the latest version of Theos:
 * 5) * Using git: git clone git://github.com/DHowett/theos.git $THEOS
 * 6) * Alternatively, you can use svn, if you prefer: svn co http://svn.howett.net/svn/theos/trunk $THEOS
 * 7) Download ldid to $THEOS/bin: git clone git://git.saurik.com/ldid.git&#10;cd ldid&#10;git submodule update --init&#10;./make.sh&#10;cp -f ./ldid $THEOS/bin/ldid

On iOS
(On your iOS device:)


 * 1) Create a file at /etc/apt/sources.list.d/coredev.nl.list containing the following line: deb http://coredev.nl/cydia iphone main
 * 2) Create a file at /etc/apt/sources.list.d/howett.net.list containing the following line: deb http://nix.howett.net/theos ./
 * 3) Make sure APT 0.6 Transitional Package is installed before doing this step.As root, issue these commands (using either SSH or MobileTerminal): apt-get update  apt-get install perl net.howett.theos

Note: Theos will be installed to /var/theos/ on your device, hereafter referred to as $THEOS in this guide.

Creating a Project
Theos lets you create new projects based on templates using the New Instance Creator (NIC). You do not need to be root to do this step, nor should you be. Start the NIC wizard using the following command:

$THEOS/bin/nic.pl

NIC will prompt you for all the necessary information before creating a project.

NIC Example
Here is an example of what you will see when using the NIC to create a project (with user input shown in bold):

$ $THEOS/bin/nic.pl NIC 1.0 - New Instance Creator --  [1.] iphone/application [2.] iphone/library [3.] iphone/preference_bundle [4.] iphone/tool [5.] iphone/tweak Choose a Template (required): 1 Project Name (required): iPhoneDevWiki Package Name [com.yourcompany.iphonedevwiki]: net.howett.iphonedevwiki Authour/Maintainer Name [Dustin L. Howett]: Instantiating iphone/application in iphonedevwiki/... Done. $

The above will create a folder ./iphonedevwiki in the current working directory - make sure you have permissions to create a folder.

Making your Project
When you have finished developing your tweak/app, you may want to distribute it, either to your own device, or to an external source.

Before you do, add Theos environment variables to your  (or the equivalent for your shell). Open  (which is in your home directory) in your favorite editor and add this on the last line, replacing the device name with your own device's name (replacing spaces with dashes) or its IP address:

(To get your device's IP address, go to settings, Wi-Fi, then press the i on the network you are currently connected on, and then see where it says IP Address. This is what you type in, if you don't want to use a device name.)

Load this into the shell with, or close the terminal window and launch a new one.

When you are making the project, type this in the terminal, in your project folder:

$ make package install

This will generate a .deb file, which you can distribute to people or to repositories. It will then ask for your root password and install the .deb onto your device. If you haven't changed your root password, the default password is alpine. Make sure you change your root password, which you can do with passwd (see "Root Password How-To" on the Cydia homepage for detailed instructions).

If you just want to make a package, type:

$ make package

Getting Help
If you need further assistance, or if you have other questions about Theos itself, feel free to connect to #theos on irc.saurik.com using your preferred IRC client. If you don't already have a preferred IRC client, you can learn more here: IRC.