I just upgraded XCode to the latest 4.0 final. First, I almost bought it from the Mac App store, before checking if I was entitled to a free download as an authorised Apple developer.

It turned out that downloading for five bucks (3.99€ here in Euro-Land) is for those who do not participate to Apple iOS development program.

For us developers, Xcode is still a free download, phew: nothing in comparison with the shaving Microsoft imposes to professional developers. We lucky Apple iOS developers pay in order to participate to Apple developer's program, but that's it. So, if you are a fellow developer, downloading it from the App store is just a bit silly. Anyway, compare that 5$ to what Microsoft charges for their bloated development software, here in Europe, upgrades for professional tools are north of 800 €.No surprise 

Xcode 4 is a huge 4.3 Gigabytes dowload, which, after expansion, takes more than 10 gigabytes of disk space! I still remember when Unix was called a "huge" operating system, taking more than 50 megabytes and thus requiring an hard disk in order to being able to function. Now I can't write that sentence without a smile.

Everything is now integrated into a single IDE, including Interface Builder, which is not anymore a separate application. 

After a little struggling in order to recognise where the usual stuff is, it sorts of looks "familiar", and after a while ypu can start happily producing code again. However, it feels a lot more sluggish and "bloated" than the somewhat minimalist design we have learned to love so far.

I make a point not to use beta software for development, therefore I basically ignored Xcode 4 previews this far, so this was, although not a shock, a definite surprise. It looks there are a lot of improvements, here and there, in particular in the integration with Interface Builder, and also in how you can now get more precise visual cues about the sizing and displacement of UI widgets.

It sorts of "compiles" and parses its way why you are writing, in order to correct most mistakes earlier, but definitely feels slower and less fizzly. I almost regret having upgraded this quick. 

On the dislikes: it lost all project settings and any "memory" of projects I was working on earlier, which had to be reopened and rebuilt. It also duplicated (does this happen at every major Xcode release?) my code signing identities, I had to manually delete one from my keystore.

If you are getting "code signing failed because there was a duplicate identity..." now you know what to do (it is happening a lot recently):

Go to the Utilities page in Finder, then locate the Keychain utility. Search, I repeat, Search for your duplicated identty and remove the oldest one. If you don't search, if the duplicate is in the System keystore, there is no way on earth you are going to see it displayed.

I will have to get used to this tool, as this is the new standard, and nostalgia won't get me too far.