iOS Tweak Development for Windows 📱📝4️⃣💻

A simple guide on how to setup and configure your windows environment for developing Cydia tweaks.

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Get Cygwin

32-bit version: https://cygwin.com/setup-x86.exe
64-bit version: https://cygwin.com/setup-x86_64.exe

Installing Initial Cygwin Package

Select Packages and search for lynx and under Web will be "lynx: A text-based Web Browser"

Click on lynx once, and click next, let it download and install.

Create icon on Desktop as we will need to run Cygwin as Administrator.

Installing Additional Cygwin Packages

After installing lynx, we can now install other packages much easier.

Install apt-cyg

Open Cygwin Terminal as Administrator

Put the following code into Cygwin.

lynx -source rawgit.com/transcode-open/apt-cyg/master/apt-cyg > apt-cyg  
install apt-cyg /bin  

^{Check out apt-cyg on Github}

Installing Development Tools

Just copy and paste this whole block of text into Cygwin and let it download and install all of the Development-related tools.

apt-cyg install ca-certificates 
apt-cyg install git  
apt-cyg install make  
apt-cyg install openssh  
apt-cyg install perl  
apt-cyg install python  
apt-cyg install wget  
apt-cyg install unzip	

Setting up $THEOS Directory

The default theos directory used throughout the rest of this guide

export THEOS=/opt/theos

Installing Theos

git clone --recursive https://github.com/theos/theos.git $THEOS/

Installing iOSToolchain4Win

mkdir -p $THEOS/toolchain/windows  

32-Bit System

Only supports up to iOS 8.4 SDK with armv7 (no support for arm64).

git clone -b master https://github.com/coolstar/iOSToolchain4Win.git $THEOS/toolchain/windows/iphone  

64-Bit System

Supports up to iOS 9.3 SDK with armv7 and arm64. (possibly iOS 10 SDK)

git clone -b x86_64 https://github.com/coolstar/iOSToolchain4Win.git $THEOS/toolchain/windows/iphone  

Obtaining SDKs

Grab the necessary SDKs you need for development and download them.

Creating SDK directory

mkdir $THEOS/sdks  
cd $THEOS/sdks  

Installing SDK

Replace X.X with the iOS version you wish to download

wget https://sdks.website/dl/iPhoneOSX.X.sdk.tbz2

wget http://resources.airnativeextensions.com/ios/iPhoneOSX.X.sdk.zip

^{Check out sdks.website airnativeextensions.com for available SDKs.}

Extracting SDK

Replace X.X with the iOS version you wish to extract

tar xvf iPhoneOSX.X.sdk.zip

unzip iPhoneOSX.X.sdk.zip

Installing Headers

Download Headers used to hook into iOS.

git clone https://github.com/theos/headers.git $THEOS/temp  
mv $THEOS/temp/.git $THEOS/include/.git  
rm -rf $THEOS/temp  
  
git clone https://github.com/coolstar/iOS-9.3-SpringBoard-Headers.git $THEOS/temp  
mv $THEOS/temp/.git $THEOS/include/.git  
rm -rf $THEOS/temp  

^{/temp is used to circumvent "non-empty directory" error.}

Remotely Connect to your iDevice

These commands put the export lines into your .bash_profile (Default: C:\cygwin\home\%user%\.bash_profile).

echo 'export THEOS=/opt/theos' >> ~/.bash_profile  
echo 'export THEOS_DEVICE_IP=XXX.XXX.XXX.XXX THEOS_DEVICE_PORT=22' >> ~/.bash_profile  

^{Replace XXX.XXX.XXX.XXX with your Device's IP}

Projects Directory

mkdir /opt/projects  
cd /opt/projects  

New Instance Creator

Templates for creating projects (such as tweaks)

$THEOS/bin/nic.pl  

^{Select iphone/tweak, 11. if you have used this guide.}

Begin Coding 📄

I personally use:

• Visual Studio Code
• Visual Studio Enterprise or
• Atom

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^{📚 https://coolstar.org/theos.pdf https://cygwin.com/ https://github.com/coolstar/iOSToolchain4Win/ https://github.com/theos/theos/ https://github.com/theos/theos/wiki/Installation https://github.com/transcode-open/apt-cyg/ https://iphonedevwiki.net/index.php/Theos/Setup https://sdks.website/ https://sharedinstance.net/2013/12/build-on-windows/} --- ^{💸 [Donate via PayPal](https://paypal.me/matthewtrigg/5aud)}