New Xcode Build System and BuildSettingExtractor
June 13, 2017
Last week at WWDC 2017, Apple announced a new build system for Xcode, with an opt-in preview in Xcode 9. The new system is written in Swift and promises to be a significant advance in a number of areas including performance and dependency management. The new system is built on top of the open source llbuild project and lays the foundation for integrating the Xcode build system with the Swift Package Manager.
You opt in to the new build system per project or workspace. To do so in the Xcode 9 beta, open a project file and then go to File > Project Settings… and in the sheet that appears, choose New Build System (Preview) from the Build System popup menu. Note that the menu item will be File > Workspace Settings… if you are working with a workspace.
(For a workspace use File > Workspace Settings…)
The big news of a new build system made me curious to see if there were any changes I would need to make to BuildSettingExtractor.
If you are not familiar with it, BuildSettingExtractor is an open source utility that helps you move to using xcconfig files. It reads the build settings embedded in an Xcode project file and extracts the settings into xcconfig files. It can also extract the Xcode help for each build setting to produce automatically documented configuration files. (Read my prior post Generating Xcode Build Configuration Files with BuildSettingExtractor for more about the benefits of using xcconfig files.)
My investigation led me to look more closely at what was changing and what was staying the same when it came to the new build system and build settings in Xcode 9.
When it comes to build settings, there are two big operations: Defining build settings and using build settings.
As developers, we spend our time on the first part, defining build settings1. In a complex project or workspace, this can be an involved process. Defining build settings includes all of the following:
- Build settings defined for each target and for the project itself
- Variable substitution to define derived build settings using ${} or $()
- Conditional build settings based on build configuration, architecture, and SDK
- Optionally using xcconfig files to define build settings
- Understanding the well-defined hierarchy of how build settings are inherited and used
In the end, these intricate and flexible mechanisms for defining build settings resolve into a big dictionary of key-value pairs that is passed to the build system.
The build system is what uses the build settings to help direct how it builds a target. The build system coordinates the various tools required, such as the compiler and linker. It uses a target’s build phases and build settings to generate a build product (e.g. app, extension, framework, library). It understands all of a target’s dependencies and builds them as well. The build system is a complicated beastie with a lot of responsibilities and it is what is being modernized beginning in Xcode 9.
Same build settings.
On a number of my projects, I’ve switched from the current build system to the new build system in Xcode 9 to investigate. It appears that everything about defining build settings remains unchanged. Moving between the old and new build systems did not cause any build setting changes or recommended changes. The mechanisms for generating that giant bucket of key-value pairs known as build settings seem to be just the same as before.
This is great news. As developers, we don’t need to learn a new complex system for defining build settings. We get to enjoy the benefits of a new, faster, modern build system with our existing build settings left intact.
As the developer of BuildSettingExtractor, this is also great news—no big changes required. After doing some testing and a tweak here and there, BuildSettingExtractor is now updated to work with the Xcode 9 beta. I invite you to check out BuildSettingExtractor and the new build system in Xcode 9. •
- Xcode 9 beta is available to members of the Apple Developer Program at https://developer.apple.com
- BuildSettingExtractor is available at https://github.com/dempseyatgithub/BuildSettingExtractor
- Additional posts about BuildSettingExtractor
1And debugging them.⏎
Categories: Software Development, iOS, macOS, tvOS, watchOS