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Issue 26
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Hey everyone! ๐ Welcome to the twenty-sixth issue of the iOS CI Newsletter. Hope youโve had a great couple of weeks!
By the time this issue of the newsletter is sent, I will already be in Leeds in preparation for SwiftLeeds, which I am super excited about. This conference has a special meaning for me as it will be the last conference that I speak at or attend while I am living in the UK.
As I announced this week, after 2 wonderful years at the BBC where I have met and learnt from some amazing people and 9 years living in the UK where I have met most of my best friends and first lived together with my fiancรฉ, it is now time for a new chapter back home in Spain.
As you can imagine, I am now frantically packing and getting ready for the move but I am still committed to delivering some good content for everyone, so keep your eyes peeled for articles coming in the next few weeks! Also, if you happen to be in Leeds and you attend the conference, make sure you come up to me and say hi! ๐
๐ M1 GitHub-hosted runners publicly available!
GitHub announced this week on their blog that M1 macOS runners are now available to any developer, team or enterprise using GitHub Actions on a public beta! This change has been a long time coming and I am excited it has finally landed ๐.
โ ๏ธ These so-called larger runners are excluded from GitHub Actionโs free tier and, even if you are using them on a public repository, you will charged for using them.
๐ Xcode 15.1 fixes a big performance issue
Xcode 15โs stable version shipped with a bug that caused the first run of a test suite to take a significant amount of time to launch on an iOS simulator.
This issue was noticed and mitigated by CI/CD providers like Bitrise, but the true fix to the issue has now landed with the release of Xcode 15.1. If you migrated to using Xcode 15 on CI/CD, make sure you update now to benefit from this fix!
๐ฆ Makefiles for iOS developers
While I tend to default to plugins and Swift scripts at the moment, I have thoroughly enjoyed using Makefiles in the past to improve developer experience and streamline tasks like bootstrapping a project or building a binary.
In this article, Artur Gruchaลa explains how Makefiles work and shares a couple of use cases where you might want to use them as an iOS developer ๐.
๐ Understanding the impact of analytics frameworks
I am not a big fan of third-party analytics frameworks in general and I have always preferred rolling my solution with data that stays on my servers where possible.
I do understand that, due to time constraints and cost of implementation, this might not be possible and you might need to go for a third-party solution. If you do so, I would recommend checking out this article by Brian Capps on the Emerge Tools blog where they analyze the impact of popular analytics frameworks on an application. Brilliant stuff as always on their blog! ๐
๐ The ultimate guide to SwiftFormat
While I have only used SwiftLint in the past, I have heard wonderful things about SwiftFormat and how it can work very well alongside SwiftLint. For a while now I have been looking for a comprehensive guide about it and I am so happy I have finally found it!
In this article, Pranav Kasetti goes through every possible way you can set up SwiftFormat automation for your project. From build phases and SPM plugins, all the way through to git hooks and Danger checks on CI/CD! ๐