I have my first iOS app under my belt (a relatively simple iPad app that will be released in a month or so), but now I'm moving on to something more ambitious and can use some tips.
My next project will actually be two great but closely related iPad apps that will share quite a few basic features and a common data format. Therefore, my instinct is to develop these two applications in conjunction with developing a core framework shared by both, and I would like this common framework to use CoreData and also provide GUI elements (NIBs, view controllers) that can be used by the respective applications. So my further instinct is to create 3 Xcode projects: one iOS app project for app A, a second iOS app project for app B, and a third CocoaTouch project for the overall structure.
Questions:
1) Is this the right way to structure my development, or is there a better way to do parallel development of two closely related applications and a common structure?
2) Can the framework use CoreData? (I ask this because when you create a CocoaTouch framework project in Xcode, you are not offered the option of using CoreData - nor the choice of unit tests - like when creating an iOS application project).
3) Is there a way to “convert” an iOS application project into a framework project, or maybe it is preferable to build an application project in a target environment? This would allow me to create a framework project with all the free Xcode settings (NIB, master data, etc.) instead of adding all this manually.
Thank!
Charles