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Build Tools for iOS

133 points by Smiller 13y ago

hexis 13y ago
This is actually "[a] periodical about best practices and advanced techniques in Objective-C." It turned out to be more interesting than the HN title made it seem.
- aram 13y ago
  You have to admin that it doesn't happen too often :D
- k-mcgrady 13y ago
  The site is a periodical. The linked post is one article from the periodical. I get in it my inbox, it's always interesting.
chrisdroukas 13y ago
How does Travis CI stack up against the builtin continuous integration new to Xcode 5?
- novum 13y ago
  Travis CI (for now) is stuck on iOS 6, so you're out of luck if you're targeting 7. They expect to resolve this soon. You must also subscribe to a paid plan if you want Travis to build your private repo. That said, I use Travis for all of my iOS 6-compatible public cocoapods on Github. Xcode 5's built-in Xcode bots require OS X Mavericks Server ($20) and, in my experience, has a very brittle setup if you're using Cocoapods. It's probably fine for simpler projects. I've personally been running Jenkins locally. My build script: - Downloads provisioning profiles from Apple's dev center using Cupertino[0] - Builds and codesigns my app using Xctool[1] - Archives the app with xcrun - Builds my app again with the Testflight library, then uploads the result to TF [0] https://github.com/nomad/cupertino https://github.com/nomad/cupertino [1] https://github.com/facebook/xctool https://github.com/facebook/xctool -- the only Facebook product I use! Edit: Jenkins has an Xcode plugin, though I don't use it (I use xctool instead). I do use Jenkins' Testflight plugin, which makes it very easy to upload your build to testflight and include the build's changelog in your release notes.
  - mikehotel 13y ago
    Thanks for the Jenkins info. If you have an iOS Developer account, OS X Mavericks Server is available at no additional cost.
- perishabledave 13y ago
  FYI, there are a few problems with getting Cocoapods to work with Xcode's CI. I think there are a few who have managed to find out workarounds, but it requires some tinkering around at the moment. https://github.com/CocoaPods/CocoaPods/issues/1492 https://github.com/CocoaPods/CocoaPods/issues/1492
- drewcrawford 13y ago
  I second the advice to go with a 3rd-party CI (although I am partial to TeamCity). This is especially because Apple's xcodebuild got way better in this release. It's the underlying deployment system behind the new CI, and in addition it can deploy things to devices now and handle all sorts of neat things that not even the best 3rd-party tools could do before. So: > Unfortunately, xcodebuild doesn’t properly support test targets and application tests for iOS. This is out of date, and if xcodebuild has given you problems in the past you should try it again.
  - mackey 13y ago
    Has teamcity fixed it's Xcode runner yet for Xcode 5? I am using team city with shell scripts that hand off to "xcodebuild" and "xcodebuild -test | ocunit2junit" but for I would have liked to try out the runners. I prefer Jenkins overall, but our org uses team city and I would rather use something that has people devoted to managing it versus playing system administrator myself.
- mackey 13y ago
  One of things that becomes evident when looking at the CI Bots is how inflexible it is. From what I gather pre/post built steps require baking them into your Xcode project for example. It just seems like it was developed for very simple projects being developed by a small team with little to no external dependencies. I wonder if people building these tools have any experience building large scale iOS apps. Maybe they do, and developing for that case wasn't their objective.
- UK-AL 13y ago
  Personally I just set up jenkins.
kyle_martin1 13y ago
Love objc.io and their consistent quality iOS articles. I learn at least a few new things with every newsletter.
deleted 13y ago
[deleted]
marcosero 13y ago
Love objc.io Best iOS articles ever
nicholassmith 13y ago
They also now have a Newsstand app, which is predictably lovely. One of the best programming resources I'm subscribed too, the articles are always interesting and I always learn something new from them.
- prehkugler 13y ago
  I subscribe to this and NSHipster. What other Obj-C resources do you follow?
  - peyton 13y ago
    Mike Ash's articles are the most in-depth I've seen. http://mikeash.com/pyblog/ http://mikeash.com/pyblog/
    - sjtgraham 13y ago
      Yikes, that index page is incredibly hard to read, the actual content pages are much easier to read though. Looks like a solid resource, thanks.
      - perishabledave 13y ago
        It's worth it to go through the archives of Friday Q&A on Mike Ash's site.
  - cshenoy 13y ago
    There's also iOS Dev Weekly (http://iosdevweekly.com/ http://iosdevweekly.com/) a curated newsletter with links to happenings in the iOS space.
  - rbritton 13y ago
    http://iosdevelopertips.com http://iosdevelopertips.com has some useful stuff too.
    - 13y ago
0x09 13y ago
> There are a lot of other analyses that clang does for you. If you clone the clang repository and go to lib/StaticAnalyzer/Checkers, you’ll see all the static checkers. You can get a list of these from clang with `clang -cc1 -analyzer-checker-help` Looks like this http://pastie.org/pastes/8466312/text http://pastie.org/pastes/8466312/text
kingi 13y ago
Maven integration - https://github.com/sap-production/xcode-maven-plugin https://github.com/sap-production/xcode-maven-plugin
Aqua_Geek 13y ago
I’d be interested in hearing what other devs are using for iOS builds. All the options I’ve tried have been pretty terrible.

133 points by Smiller 13y ago

hexis 13y ago

This is actually "[a] periodical about best practices and advanced techniques in Objective-C." It turned out to be more interesting than the HN title made it seem.

aram 13y ago
You have to admin that it doesn't happen too often :D
k-mcgrady 13y ago
The site is a periodical. The linked post is one article from the periodical. I get in it my inbox, it's always interesting.

chrisdroukas 13y ago

How does Travis CI stack up against the builtin continuous integration new to Xcode 5?

novum 13y ago
Travis CI (for now) is stuck on iOS 6, so you're out of luck if you're targeting 7. They expect to resolve this soon. You must also subscribe to a paid plan if you want Travis to build your private repo. That said, I use Travis for all of my iOS 6-compatible public cocoapods on Github. Xcode 5's built-in Xcode bots require OS X Mavericks Server ($20) and, in my experience, has a very brittle setup if you're using Cocoapods. It's probably fine for simpler projects. I've personally been running Jenkins locally. My build script: - Downloads provisioning profiles from Apple's dev center using Cupertino[0] - Builds and codesigns my app using Xctool[1] - Archives the app with xcrun - Builds my app again with the Testflight library, then uploads the result to TF [0] https://github.com/nomad/cupertino https://github.com/nomad/cupertino [1] https://github.com/facebook/xctool https://github.com/facebook/xctool -- the only Facebook product I use! Edit: Jenkins has an Xcode plugin, though I don't use it (I use xctool instead). I do use Jenkins' Testflight plugin, which makes it very easy to upload your build to testflight and include the build's changelog in your release notes.
- mikehotel 13y ago
  Thanks for the Jenkins info. If you have an iOS Developer account, OS X Mavericks Server is available at no additional cost.
perishabledave 13y ago
FYI, there are a few problems with getting Cocoapods to work with Xcode's CI. I think there are a few who have managed to find out workarounds, but it requires some tinkering around at the moment. https://github.com/CocoaPods/CocoaPods/issues/1492 https://github.com/CocoaPods/CocoaPods/issues/1492
drewcrawford 13y ago
I second the advice to go with a 3rd-party CI (although I am partial to TeamCity). This is especially because Apple's xcodebuild got way better in this release. It's the underlying deployment system behind the new CI, and in addition it can deploy things to devices now and handle all sorts of neat things that not even the best 3rd-party tools could do before. So: > Unfortunately, xcodebuild doesn’t properly support test targets and application tests for iOS. This is out of date, and if xcodebuild has given you problems in the past you should try it again.
- mackey 13y ago
  Has teamcity fixed it's Xcode runner yet for Xcode 5? I am using team city with shell scripts that hand off to "xcodebuild" and "xcodebuild -test | ocunit2junit" but for I would have liked to try out the runners. I prefer Jenkins overall, but our org uses team city and I would rather use something that has people devoted to managing it versus playing system administrator myself.
mackey 13y ago
One of things that becomes evident when looking at the CI Bots is how inflexible it is. From what I gather pre/post built steps require baking them into your Xcode project for example. It just seems like it was developed for very simple projects being developed by a small team with little to no external dependencies. I wonder if people building these tools have any experience building large scale iOS apps. Maybe they do, and developing for that case wasn't their objective.
UK-AL 13y ago
Personally I just set up jenkins.

kyle_martin1 13y ago

Love objc.io and their consistent quality iOS articles. I learn at least a few new things with every newsletter.

deleted 13y ago

[deleted]

marcosero 13y ago

Love objc.io Best iOS articles ever

nicholassmith 13y ago

They also now have a Newsstand app, which is predictably lovely. One of the best programming resources I'm subscribed too, the articles are always interesting and I always learn something new from them.

prehkugler 13y ago
I subscribe to this and NSHipster. What other Obj-C resources do you follow?
- peyton 13y ago
  Mike Ash's articles are the most in-depth I've seen. http://mikeash.com/pyblog/ http://mikeash.com/pyblog/
  - sjtgraham 13y ago
    Yikes, that index page is incredibly hard to read, the actual content pages are much easier to read though. Looks like a solid resource, thanks.
    - perishabledave 13y ago
      It's worth it to go through the archives of Friday Q&A on Mike Ash's site.
- cshenoy 13y ago
  There's also iOS Dev Weekly (http://iosdevweekly.com/ http://iosdevweekly.com/) a curated newsletter with links to happenings in the iOS space.
- rbritton 13y ago
  http://iosdevelopertips.com http://iosdevelopertips.com has some useful stuff too.
  - 13y ago

0x09 13y ago

> There are a lot of other analyses that clang does for you. If you clone the clang repository and go to lib/StaticAnalyzer/Checkers, you’ll see all the static checkers. You can get a list of these from clang with `clang -cc1 -analyzer-checker-help` Looks like this http://pastie.org/pastes/8466312/text http://pastie.org/pastes/8466312/text

kingi 13y ago

Maven integration - https://github.com/sap-production/xcode-maven-plugin https://github.com/sap-production/xcode-maven-plugin

Aqua_Geek 13y ago

I’d be interested in hearing what other devs are using for iOS builds. All the options I’ve tried have been pretty terrible.