Learning More About Xcode Build Settings with BuildSettingExtractor
February 8, 2015
Last week I posted about BuildSettingExtractor, a utility that makes it easy to pull the build settings out of an Xcode project file and into xcconfig build configuration files. (The post also mentions some xcconfig file benefits with links to ‘how to’ information. Read the earlier post here.)
I also wanted BuildSettingExtractor to be useful for anyone who wants to learn more about the build settings in their projects. To that end, the latest version, available on github, generates build setting descriptions gleaned from the installed version of Xcode.
For example:
// Framework Search Paths // // This is a list of paths to folders containing frameworks to be // searched by the compiler for both included or imported header // files when compiling C, Objective-C, C++, or Objective-C++, and by // the linker for frameworks used by the product. Paths are delimited // by whitespace, so any paths with spaces in them need to be // properly quoted. [-F] FRAMEWORK_SEARCH_PATHS = $(DEVELOPER_FRAMEWORKS_DIR) $(inherited) // Info.plist File // // This is the project-relative path to the plist file that contains // the Info.plist information used by bundles. INFOPLIST_FILE = BuildSettingExtractorTests/BuildSettingExtractorTests-Info.plist
Inline Build Setting Info
To learn more about build settings, Apple provides the Build Setting Reference (Apple developer documentation links are notoriously fragile, just search for the document) as well as Quick Help in Xcode when a build setting is selected. (In Xcode choose View > Utilities > Show Quick Help Inspector (Cmd-Opt-2))
In addition to these ways of learning more, BuildSettingExtractor gleans the build setting info from Xcode and puts it inline in the generated xcconfig files. This has a few benefits:
- Read about each build setting without selecting setting one by one in Xcode
- Read about only the build settings currently set in your project and targets
- Information about build settings is available wherever you are looking at the xcconfig file: github, text editors, diff tools, etc.
What if I don’t want this lovely but verbose feature?
If you want BuildSettingExtractor to generate pithy xcconfig files without the build setting info, Choose BuildSettingExtractor > Preferences… (Command-,) for the new preferences sheet and turn it off.
Happy Building! (and a call for help)
I hope you find BuildSettingExtractor useful, either as a learning tool, or to get rolling with xcconfig files. If you do find it useful, please spread the word about it: https://github.com/dempseyatgithub/BuildSettingExtractor.
As for the call for help, if you would like to help out with a basic app icon for BuildSettingExtractor, the utility can emerge from the primordial world of the generic app icon. Contact me if you are interested. •
Categories: Mac, Software Development, iOS