Visual Studio will generate class declarations for CLR classes from the associated metadata, if you do a `go to declaration' on a system class. Something simil

Visual Studio will generate class declarations for CLR classes from the associated metadata, if you do a `go to declaration' on a system class. Something similar could be done with Objective-C, judging by the output of the `class-dump' tool (see http://www.codethecode.com/projects/class-dump/ http://www.codethecode.com/projects/class-dump/). If you run it on an app's private frameworks - I hear that Xcode 4 might demonstrate the principle - you'll get back a surprisingly complete set of interface, method and ivar declarations. This suggests that if the will were there, we could do away with header files, even for libraries shipped as compiled objects. It works well for the CLR.