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Issue 18
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Hey everyone! 👋 Welcome to the eighteenth issue of the iOS CI Newsletter. Hope you’ve had a great couple of weeks!
I have spent the past week trying out new features announced in WWDC such as macros, Xcode Cloud and App Store Connect API advancements and Swift Data.
I have to say that so far I am very impressed! It all looks very exciting and I can’t wait to get the app at work building on Xcode 15. I think I will start looking into it next week and report my findings in the next issue of the newsletter, so keep your eyes peeled 👀.
❓ What about you? Have you already tried to build your app at work on Xcode 15? If so, what issues you have found?
📦 Try new SPM features with version-specific manifests
Swift 5.9, which ships with the Xcode 15 betas announced at WWDC 2023, comes with new SPM features such as macro targets and new permissions for command plugins.
In this week’s article on my blog, I show you how you can safely try these new features out without breaking backward compatibility.
📢 Mobile DevOps Summit is back!
Bitrise has recently announced that the Mobile DevOps Summit is retaking place this year on the 4th and 5th of October.
I attended and spoke at last year’s edition and I would thoroughly recommend it if you’re interested in topics such as mobile CI/CD, automation and testing. You can register for the event here and, if you have a topic in mind you’d like to speak about, the Call For Papers is now open too!
👀 Uploading link maps to Emerge
Emerge is an amazing service that can help you improve your app in a number of ways. You can do things such as seeing how much your app size has varied from one build to another or profile how long it takes for your app to launch.
Some of Emerge’s more advanced features require you to upload linkmaps for your app. In this article, Roger Oba shows you how you can generate these linkmaps using Fastlane and Xcode and upload them to Emerge.
🚀 Understanding iOS CI/CD
This article by Natascha Fadeeva is an excellent resource if you want to get started with CI/CD. It goes through what CI/CD is and the core concepts behind it, what role it plays in iOS app development and some of the most common CI/CD tools available.
📱 Comparing build distribution services
If you’re an iOS developer you will have most likely used TestFlight to distribute builds of your app with testers but did you know there are other services available that might be a better match for your needs?
In this article, Gabriel Savit shares a great comparison of build distribution systems available, including one that Runway has recently launched ✨.
✍️ Fastlane 2.213.0: Run Xcode 14.3 with Rosetta
Xcode 14.3 dropped support for running Xcode with Rosetta but there is still an option to run an app on Rosetta simulators (as Sarun greatly explains in this article).
There was an issue where Fastlane would not allow users to make use of this option from the scan command but, as is usually the case, the amazing Josh Holtz came up with a fix for it and shipped it in version 2.213.0! ❤️
If you’d like to learn more about how this new Fastlane flag works or how you can achieve the same result using xcodebuild directly, I would thoroughly recommend reading this article by Roger Oba.