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Would this theoretically allow a Flutter app developer to build and deploy an ios app from Linux? God, I hope so.

• candiddevmike 1y ago
  It technically violates the Apple Developer Agreement AFAIK, but that seems like yet another lawsuit waiting to happen IMO.
  • ronsor 1y ago
    Apple won't do anything right now as they're certainly afraid the courts* will slap them hard. *Both US and EU now
    • saagarjha 1y ago
      They’re still rejecting Fortnite so I don’t think they’re particularly scared of anything
      • jchw 1y ago
        Epic Games sure is proving to be a formidable opponent, but they might be getting a little optimistic with thinking that Fortnite will be allowed to return to the App Store; after all, while they have been squabbling over App Store policies, I don't think any of the rulings imply that Apple still can't keep specific titles banned from the App Store at their discretion. In that particular case I kinda feel like Apple might be right to not be afraid, at least not right now. (P.S.: Personally, I initially thought Epic Games was stupid for flagrantly violating the ToS on purpose. Was that really needed to actually file the lawsuit? I dunno; I'm no expert. But it looked stupid. It looks a lot less stupid now, but it still kinda looks like a tactical mistake.) Maybe they needn't be afraid here either, but from a risk perspective it does seem like causing a stink here may not be their best move. They're still going to aggressively try to railroad people into developing on Mac; there's no iPhone Simulator on Windows or Linux after all.
        • yard2010 1y ago
          IMHO it's a matter of principle, showing the bully he has limited power no matter how big his muscles are.
          • chuckadams 1y ago
            In Epic's case it's just another bully who wants a piece of the first bully's turf.
            • tough 1y ago
              Goliath vs Goliath
            • solarkraft 1y ago
              Epic Games may do some despicable things too (this is about micro-transactions after all), but (as a software developer) in this fight I still find it reasonable to root for their side - them winning improves the world for a lot of us.
          • deleted 1y ago
            [deleted]
  • _blk 1y ago
    Yeah weird world. When Gates bundles IE that no one wants it's an abuse of power but when Jobs shoves his apples down your throat just to (try to) publish for their platform it's all OK.. Oh, or was that the lawsuit waiting to happen? ;)
    • freeamz 1y ago
      Same thing with the bank bail out, if Bush did oh my we will never hear end of it, but if cool president who smokes weed and get down some good music, then no one really call him out on it.
  • tgma 1y ago
    IIRC it is only a potential issue if the host machine isn't made by Apple. You can install Linux on a Mac and use this. IANAL yada yada.
  • petabyt 1y ago
    People have been doing hackintoshes and macos VMs for years... And apple hasn't really done anything. So I doubt this tool will provoke them.
    • conception 1y ago
      Apple has killed the Hackintosh…. It’s just bleeding out still.
      • ofrzeta 1y ago
        How so? Seems like Hackintosh got kind of obsolete with Apple Silicon.
        • cyberax 1y ago
          You can't install XCode on non-Apple devices. Or use iMessage.
          • johnisgood 1y ago
            Is this the case? How does that work? Genuinely curious. I remember I had macOS (Mac OS X, actually) on my PC. My last Hackintosh was Mac OS X Leopard. Everything seemed to work well... back then. I even had XCode working.
          • zImPatrick 1y ago
            you can still install xcode - and also still use imessage if you configure your vm correctly, see kholia/OSX-KVM
            • cyberax 1y ago
              I tried that, and I can't make it work. Sigh.
          • cosmic_cheese 1y ago
            iMessage can be made to work with a hackintosh. You just have to go the whole way in making your hackintosh fully Mac-like with a fake but plausible/realistic serial number and expected network setup. You can’t stop at just getting macOS installed and booting. I’ve had multiple installs in the past where it worked fine.
  • nar001 1y ago
    Does it? You still need to install Xcode for the iOS SDK, so they're not really doing anything wrong?
  • notpushkin 1y ago
    I believe it allows usage on “Apple-branded computers”, so building iOS apps with xtool on Asahi is probably legit. But yeah, I would probably use this for testing only, and do actual releases from macOS proper.
• Cloudef 1y ago
  Afaik its already possible with darling. Nixpkgs also has xcbuild replacement, but not sure if it can handle codesigning.
• gman83 1y ago
  Just use something like CodeMagic, I wouldn't risk getting your Apple account banned.
• loic-sharma 1y ago
  This project helps but isn’t enough alone: 1. Dart can’t cross-compile from Linux to iOS yet. You could use Dart’s interpreter instead, but that’d significantly regress performance. 2. Flutter iOS projects use the Xcode project format, you’d need to migrate that to xtool’s project format 3. Flutter hasn’t finished migrating its plugin ecosystem from CocoaPods to SwiftPM - any plugin that hasn’t migrated to SwiftPM yet likely won’t work with xtool.