Introduction

In this brief tutorial, I’ll introduce you to some useful Xcode command-line tools and present useful use cases where you can leverage their potential.

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1. Use Case: Build Workflow

CI/CD are trendy nowadays, and one of the basic checks that you can set to your repository is to ensure all your targets build. Let’s take a look at some useful commands. But first, open your terminal and run cd path_to_your_project_folder .

Show build settings

The following command will output a list with all your project settings:

xcodebuild -project MyProject.xcodeproj -showBuildSettings

If you’re looking for one in particular, use grep to filter. For example, to look up your build directory (BUILD_DIR):

xcodebuild -project MyProject.xcodeproj -showBuildSettings | grep -m 1 "BUILD_DIR" | grep -oEi "\/.*"

NOTE: You can also use -workspace MyWorkspace.xcworkspace instead of -project MyProject.xcproject. This also applies to all the following commands.

Build a scheme

To build your scheme, you can run:

xcodebuild clean -scheme MyScheme \
                 -project MyProject.xcodeproj \
                 -destination SomeDeviceOrSimulator

If you want a fresh build, add clean before build:

xcodebuild clean build  -scheme MyScheme \
                        -project MyProject.xcodeproj \
                        -destination "platform=macOS"

Here are some destinations you can choose:

• "platform=macOS"
• "platform=macOS,variant=Mac Catalyst"
• "platform=iOS"
• "platform=tvOS"
• "platform=watchOS"
• "platform=iOS Simulator"
• …

You can also choose a specific architecture: "platform=macOS,arch=arm64".

#software-development #ios #xcode #ios-app-development #programming