7 ms·

I just want a good CI/CD system for macOS to build iOS apps without needing to buy a farm of Mac Minis, or even buy a Mac, is that too much to ask?

kccqzy 6y ago
You can rent Mac servers instead of buying them.
nine_k 6y ago
The typical answer is paying to those who do that for you, like Travis. And yes, too much to ask. Apple's principal revenue source is selling hardware. They don't care if developing for their platform is not cheap; they explicitly target the premium segment, and are never uncomfortable with their well-known large margins.
- deathanatos 6y ago
  Apple doesn't care if developing for their platform is a PITA. The existence of companies like MacStadium filling rooms with Macs just to bend over backwards for inane license terms proves the paid demand is there. Apple could offer to license their OS for use not on Apple hardware — for a fee. They don't. The objection isn't to the price; the objection is that needing to manage physical hardware (as opposed to spinning up VMs like in the article) is a PITA to manage, comparatively. Companies would — and do — pay to not need to deal with that pain, but it would be a lot less painful to not need to get a third party involved / to be able to make use of the infra I have without having to stuff some Macs into a closet and wonder how I'm going to make that redundant.
GordonS 6y ago
Azure DevOps has hosted MacOS build agents, which you can use on the (generous) free tier.
- benbristow 6y ago
  Although it's slowly being migrated to GitHub (though they won't officially admit it), DevOps is a great service with a lovely UI. The pipeline docs are somewhat lacking though IMHO but once you get them working, they work great.
  - GordonS 6y ago
    I've been worried about Azure DevOps getting merged into GitHub since Microsoft bought Github, but thankfully I haven't seen any drop in the maintenance of Azure DevOps, not yet anyway. As much as I like Github for OSS projects, I really love Azure DevOps for everything else. The CI/CD capabilities are amazing, and I haven't had any real issues with lack of documentation (a few small things here and there for sure though). Long may it live, I hope!
    - lalos 6y ago
      I doubt it, the valuable thing is the GitHub brand but the meat lies on Azure. Most developers still see Microsoft as the old Microsoft of the 90s but they are actively working on that image or brand by acquisitions like Github or NPM. The inverse is most likely where GitHub is just a web endpoint for underlying Azure services.
      - sitkack 6y ago
        > old Microsoft of the 90s Not to jackknife the thread, but most developers were born in the 90s and do not remember this Microsoft. The engineering and dev managers DO remember this Microsoft. So while I agree somewhat they are trying to repair their image, with the younger crowd they only know MS as Minecraft, VS Code, Azure, Github. More people probably got exposure to Linux via WSL than all of the previous installs combined. 90s me would have thought hell would have frozen over, and now me knows it has.
        pydry 6y ago
        The only real change I've seen to Microsoft since the 90s is that it finally "embraced" open source in markets it was losing in when the only other alternative was irrelevance. They're still playing dirty tricks on open source. They're just not stupid enough to use the ones that would do more harm than good.
Andrew_nenakhov 6y ago
According to Apple software license agreements, yes, it is too much to ask. You can not legally run Mac OS on non-Apple hardware. But don't be sad, their new Mac Pro is fantastic.
- benbristow 6y ago
  It's also £5,499.00 in the UK (just under $7k USD). Not exactly ideal for hobbyists.
  - zeptonix 6y ago
    That's only about 7 monitor stands, could be worse /s
  - Andrew_nenakhov 6y ago
    I considered including a price tag (... and comes for only $6990 ), but decided against it for being too thick. I also think that using /s markers kinda kills the idea of sarcasm.
    - umvi 6y ago
      Poe's law is especially strong with Apple, /s is definitely needed unless you go over the top with praising the price.
      - 411111111111111 6y ago
        > unless you go over the top with praising the price most apple enthusiasts think that the price is spot on and in no way overblown. (i do not have an opinion on the matter as i neither own nor use apple devices) i dont think you can convey any point about apple in a sarcastic manner while omitting a /s tag. there are always people honestly believing the point you're stating sarcastically. this applies to both negative and positive statements
        youngtaff 6y ago
lostlogin 6y ago
VMs? And to stay within the EULA you’d do this on Mac hardware of course.
- deleted 6y ago
  [deleted]
ben509 6y ago
Github Actions has macOS builders. Not sure if they have XCode installed, though.
- jhasse 6y ago
  They have.
- tomduncalf 6y ago
  Wrote a separate comment about this, but Azure DevOps seemed to be quite a bit cheaper for Mac nodes than GH Actions. Strange as they are presumably using Azure under the hood!
sequence7 6y ago
Then you should look at either Bitrise [0] who have a CI/CD system tailored to solving that exact problem or GitHub Actions [1] that provides macOS build machines. [0] https://www.bitrise.io/ https://www.bitrise.io/ [1] https://github.com/features/actions https://github.com/features/actions
_salmon 6y ago
MacStadium is very popular for this purpose. https://www.macstadium.com/ https://www.macstadium.com/
app4soft 6y ago
> I just want a good CI/CD system for macOS to build iOS apps Why not use Travis CI by adding `.travis.yml` into your GitHub repo?
lwb 6y ago
If you make games, Unity Cloud Build can turn a Unity project into a downloadable IPA that you can easily load into TestFlight/App Store (and presumably a device or simulator, but I've never tried).
hinkley 6y ago
My CI/CD pipelines have always been a minmaxed affair of doing the math on how useful a piece of information is and how expensive it is to get. As such, it's not unusual for the OS X tests to be farther down the list and not to trigger at all if earlier stages failed. It's easier to scale up multiple subprojects if you run the first couple phases on commodity hardware and then ramp up to the more peculiar stuff only if everything else already looks good. That way, your broken build can't slow down my green build very much. It's not so much that I like doing this, as that it prevents a number of things I most definitely do not like at all.
tomduncalf 6y ago
Azure DevOps has the most reasonably priced Mac nodes I could find, I believe it’s £30/month/node (same pricing as their Windows and Linux nodes). Having to figure out another YAML config for CI isn’t my favourite task but it’s not too hard and we are generally pretty pleased with its performance (using it to build iOS app builds for every change and upload to AppCenter, which is a great free repository for them which hooks into Azure easily). Feel free to get in touch if you’d like more info.
- GordonS 6y ago
  Azure DevOps also has a generous free tier with lots of CI minutes, and I'm fairly sure you can use the MacOS pipelines in that tier. I've used Azure DevOps on several projects, and it's CI/CD capabilities really are fantastic. I've also used AppCenter (and the previous incarnation, HockeyApp), and it makes for a great app distribution experience. It also has an integration with InTune, which is very useful in the enterprise, although we did find configurating it to be a total PITA and it required a domain admin to set it up.
loxias 6y ago
I built a PoC of this before, and as far as I can tell, entirely legally. End goal was building iOS apps w/o any mac hardware. Using some open source patches to clang, libimobiledevice, and a whole bunch of other tools, I was able to write an iOS app in "good ole C in emacs" on my linux laptop, cross compile it for the iPhone, and even code sign, upload and run it on the phone. This was several years ago. If offered as a hosted service, do you really think anyone would pay for it enough to make it worth my while to code up and polish? EDIT: HAH! I forgot I said all this the last time this topic came up 2 years ago: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=17763855 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=17763855

kccqzy 6y ago

You can rent Mac servers instead of buying them.

nine_k 6y ago

The typical answer is paying to those who do that for you, like Travis. And yes, too much to ask. Apple's principal revenue source is selling hardware. They don't care if developing for their platform is not cheap; they explicitly target the premium segment, and are never uncomfortable with their well-known large margins.

deathanatos 6y ago
Apple doesn't care if developing for their platform is a PITA. The existence of companies like MacStadium filling rooms with Macs just to bend over backwards for inane license terms proves the paid demand is there. Apple could offer to license their OS for use not on Apple hardware — for a fee. They don't. The objection isn't to the price; the objection is that needing to manage physical hardware (as opposed to spinning up VMs like in the article) is a PITA to manage, comparatively. Companies would — and do — pay to not need to deal with that pain, but it would be a lot less painful to not need to get a third party involved / to be able to make use of the infra I have without having to stuff some Macs into a closet and wonder how I'm going to make that redundant.

GordonS 6y ago

Azure DevOps has hosted MacOS build agents, which you can use on the (generous) free tier.

benbristow 6y ago
Although it's slowly being migrated to GitHub (though they won't officially admit it), DevOps is a great service with a lovely UI. The pipeline docs are somewhat lacking though IMHO but once you get them working, they work great.
- GordonS 6y ago
  I've been worried about Azure DevOps getting merged into GitHub since Microsoft bought Github, but thankfully I haven't seen any drop in the maintenance of Azure DevOps, not yet anyway. As much as I like Github for OSS projects, I really love Azure DevOps for everything else. The CI/CD capabilities are amazing, and I haven't had any real issues with lack of documentation (a few small things here and there for sure though). Long may it live, I hope!
  - lalos 6y ago
    I doubt it, the valuable thing is the GitHub brand but the meat lies on Azure. Most developers still see Microsoft as the old Microsoft of the 90s but they are actively working on that image or brand by acquisitions like Github or NPM. The inverse is most likely where GitHub is just a web endpoint for underlying Azure services.
    - sitkack 6y ago
      > old Microsoft of the 90s Not to jackknife the thread, but most developers were born in the 90s and do not remember this Microsoft. The engineering and dev managers DO remember this Microsoft. So while I agree somewhat they are trying to repair their image, with the younger crowd they only know MS as Minecraft, VS Code, Azure, Github. More people probably got exposure to Linux via WSL than all of the previous installs combined. 90s me would have thought hell would have frozen over, and now me knows it has.
      - pydry 6y ago
        The only real change I've seen to Microsoft since the 90s is that it finally "embraced" open source in markets it was losing in when the only other alternative was irrelevance. They're still playing dirty tricks on open source. They're just not stupid enough to use the ones that would do more harm than good.

Andrew_nenakhov 6y ago

According to Apple software license agreements, yes, it is too much to ask. You can not legally run Mac OS on non-Apple hardware. But don't be sad, their new Mac Pro is fantastic.

benbristow 6y ago
It's also £5,499.00 in the UK (just under $7k USD). Not exactly ideal for hobbyists.
- zeptonix 6y ago
  That's only about 7 monitor stands, could be worse /s
- Andrew_nenakhov 6y ago
  I considered including a price tag (... and comes for only $6990 ), but decided against it for being too thick. I also think that using /s markers kinda kills the idea of sarcasm.
  - umvi 6y ago
    Poe's law is especially strong with Apple, /s is definitely needed unless you go over the top with praising the price.
    - 411111111111111 6y ago
      > unless you go over the top with praising the price most apple enthusiasts think that the price is spot on and in no way overblown. (i do not have an opinion on the matter as i neither own nor use apple devices) i dont think you can convey any point about apple in a sarcastic manner while omitting a /s tag. there are always people honestly believing the point you're stating sarcastically. this applies to both negative and positive statements
      - youngtaff 6y ago

lostlogin 6y ago

VMs? And to stay within the EULA you’d do this on Mac hardware of course.

deleted 6y ago
[deleted]

ben509 6y ago

Github Actions has macOS builders. Not sure if they have XCode installed, though.

jhasse 6y ago
They have.
tomduncalf 6y ago
Wrote a separate comment about this, but Azure DevOps seemed to be quite a bit cheaper for Mac nodes than GH Actions. Strange as they are presumably using Azure under the hood!

sequence7 6y ago

Then you should look at either Bitrise [0] who have a CI/CD system tailored to solving that exact problem or GitHub Actions [1] that provides macOS build machines. [0] https://www.bitrise.io/ https://www.bitrise.io/ [1] https://github.com/features/actions https://github.com/features/actions

_salmon 6y ago

MacStadium is very popular for this purpose. https://www.macstadium.com/ https://www.macstadium.com/

app4soft 6y ago

> I just want a good CI/CD system for macOS to build iOS apps Why not use Travis CI by adding `.travis.yml` into your GitHub repo?

lwb 6y ago

If you make games, Unity Cloud Build can turn a Unity project into a downloadable IPA that you can easily load into TestFlight/App Store (and presumably a device or simulator, but I've never tried).

hinkley 6y ago

My CI/CD pipelines have always been a minmaxed affair of doing the math on how useful a piece of information is and how expensive it is to get. As such, it's not unusual for the OS X tests to be farther down the list and not to trigger at all if earlier stages failed. It's easier to scale up multiple subprojects if you run the first couple phases on commodity hardware and then ramp up to the more peculiar stuff only if everything else already looks good. That way, your broken build can't slow down my green build very much. It's not so much that I like doing this, as that it prevents a number of things I most definitely do not like at all.

tomduncalf 6y ago

Azure DevOps has the most reasonably priced Mac nodes I could find, I believe it’s £30/month/node (same pricing as their Windows and Linux nodes). Having to figure out another YAML config for CI isn’t my favourite task but it’s not too hard and we are generally pretty pleased with its performance (using it to build iOS app builds for every change and upload to AppCenter, which is a great free repository for them which hooks into Azure easily). Feel free to get in touch if you’d like more info.

GordonS 6y ago
Azure DevOps also has a generous free tier with lots of CI minutes, and I'm fairly sure you can use the MacOS pipelines in that tier. I've used Azure DevOps on several projects, and it's CI/CD capabilities really are fantastic. I've also used AppCenter (and the previous incarnation, HockeyApp), and it makes for a great app distribution experience. It also has an integration with InTune, which is very useful in the enterprise, although we did find configurating it to be a total PITA and it required a domain admin to set it up.

loxias 6y ago

I built a PoC of this before, and as far as I can tell, entirely legally. End goal was building iOS apps w/o any mac hardware. Using some open source patches to clang, libimobiledevice, and a whole bunch of other tools, I was able to write an iOS app in "good ole C in emacs" on my linux laptop, cross compile it for the iPhone, and even code sign, upload and run it on the phone. This was several years ago. If offered as a hosted service, do you really think anyone would pay for it enough to make it worth my while to code up and polish? EDIT: HAH! I forgot I said all this the last time this topic came up 2 years ago: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=17763855 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=17763855