conan.tools.apple

Important

Some of the features used in this section are still under development, while they are recommended and usable and we will try not to break them in future releases, some breaking changes might still happen if necessary to prepare for the Conan 2.0 release.

XcodeDeps

Available since: 1.42.0

The XcodeDeps tool is the dependency information generator for Xcode. It will generate multiple .xcconfig configuration files, the can be used by consumers using xcodebuild or Xcode. To use them just add the generated configuration files to the Xcode project or set the -xcconfig argument from the command line.

The XcodeDeps generator can be used by name in conanfiles:

conanfile.py

class Pkg(ConanFile):
    generators = "XcodeDeps"

conanfile.txt

[generators]
XcodeDeps

And it can also be fully instantiated in the conanfile generate() method:

conanfile.py

from conan import ConanFile
from conan.tools.apple import XcodeDeps

class Pkg(ConanFile):
    settings = "os", "compiler", "arch", "build_type"
    requires = "libpng/1.6.37@" # Note libpng has zlib as transitive dependency

    def generate(self):
        xcode = XcodeDeps(self)
        xcode.generate()

When the XcodeDeps generator is used, every invocation of conan install will generate several configuration files, per dependency and configuration. For the conanfile.py above, for example:

$ conan install conanfile.py # default is Release
$ conan install conanfile.py -s build_type=Debug

This generator is multi-configuration. It will generate different files for the different Debug/Release configurations for each requirement. It will also generate one single file (conandeps.xcconfig) aggregating all the files for the direct dependencies (just libpng in this case). The above commands generate the following files:

.
├── conan_config.xcconfig
├── conan_libpng.xcconfig
├── conan_libpng_libpng.xcconfig
├── conan_libpng_libpng_debug_x86_64.xcconfig
├── conan_libpng_libpng_release_x86_64.xcconfig
├── conan_zlib.xcconfig
├── conan_zlib_zlib.xcconfig
├── conan_zlib_zlib_debug_x86_64.xcconfig
├── conan_zlib_zlib_release_x86_64.xcconfig
└── conandeps.xcconfig

The first conan install with the default Release and x86_64 configuration generates:

conan_libpng_libpng_release_x86_64.xcconfig: declares variables with conditional logic to be considered only for the active configuration in Xcode or the one passed by command line to xcodebuild.
conan_libpng_libpng.xcconfig: includes conan_libpng_libpng_release_x86_64.xcconfig and declares the following Xcode build settings: SYSTEM_HEADER_SEARCH_PATHS, GCC_PREPROCESSOR_DEFINITIONS, OTHER_CFLAGS, OTHER_CPLUSPLUSFLAGS, FRAMEWORK_SEARCH_PATHS, LIBRARY_SEARCH_PATHS, OTHER_LDFLAGS. It also includes the generated xcconfig files for transitive dependencies (conan_zlib_zlib.xcconfig in this case).
conan_libpng.xcconfig: in this case it only includes conan_libpng_libpng.xcconfig, but in the case that the required package has components, this file will include all of the components of the package.
Same 3 files will be generated for each dependency in the graph. In this case, as zlib is a dependency of libpng it will generate: conan_zlib_zlib_release_x86_64.xcconfig, conan_zlib_zlib.xcconfig and conan_zlib.xcconfig.
conandeps.xcconfig: configuration files including all direct dependencies, in this case, it just includes conan_libpng.xcconfig.
The main conan_config.xcconfig file, to be added to the project. Includes both the files from this generator and the generated by the XcodeToolchain in case it was also set.

The second conan install -s build_type=Debug generates:

conan_libpng_libpng_debug_x86_64.xcconfig: same variables as the one below for Debug configuration.
conan_libpng_libpng.xcconfig: this file has been already created by the previous command, now it’s modified to add the include for conan_libpng_debug_x86_64.xcconfig.
conan_libpng.xcconfig: this file will remain the same.
Like in the previous command the same 3 files will be generated for each dependency in the graph. In this case, as zlib is a dependency of libpng it will generate: conan_zlib_zlib_debug_x86_64.xcconfig, conan_zlib_zlib.xcconfig and conan_zlib.xcconfig.
conandeps.xcconfig: configuration files including all direct dependencies, in this case, it just includes conan_libpng.xcconfig.
The main conan_config.xcconfig file, to be added to the project. Includes both the files from this generator and the generated by the XcodeToolchain in case it was also set.

If you want to add this dependencies to you Xcode project, you just have to add the conan_config.xcconfig configuration file for all of the configurations you want to use (usually Debug and Release).

Additional variables defined

Besides the variables that define the Xcode build settings mentioned above, there are additional variables declared that may be useful to use in your Xcode project:

PACKAGE_ROOT_<package_name>: Set to the location of the package_folder attribute.

Components support

Since Conan version 1.49.0, this generator supports packages with components. That means that:

If a dependency package_info() declares cpp_info.requires on some components, the generated .xcconfig files will contain includes to only those components.
The current package requires will be fully dependent on and all components. Recall that the package_info() only applies for consumers, but not to the current package.

Custom configurations

If your Xcode project defines custom configurations, like ReleaseShared, or MyCustomConfig, it is possible to define it into the XcodeDeps generator, so different project configurations can use different set of dependencies. Let’s say that our current project can be built as a shared library, with the custom configuration ReleaseShared, and the package also controls this with the shared option:

from conan import ConanFile
from conan.tools.apple import XcodeDeps

class Pkg(ConanFile):
    settings = "os", "compiler", "arch", "build_type"
    options = {"shared": [True, False]}
    default_options = {"shared": False}
    requires = "zlib/1.2.11"

    def generate(self):
        xcode = XcodeDeps(self)
        # We assume that -o *:shared=True is used to install all shared deps too
        if self.options.shared:
            xcode.configuration = str(self.settings.build_type) + "Shared"
        xcode.generate()

This will manage to generate new .xcconfig files for this custom configuration, and when you switch to this configuration in the IDE, the build system will take the correct values depending wether we want to link with shared or static libraries.

XcodeToolchain

Available since: 1.46.0

The XcodeToolchain is the toolchain generator for Xcode. It will generate .xcconfig configuration files that can be added to Xcode projects. This generator translates the current package configuration, settings, and options, into Xcode .xcconfig files syntax.

The XcodeToolchain generator can be used by name in conanfiles:

conanfile.py

class Pkg(ConanFile):
    generators = "XcodeToolchain"

conanfile.txt

[generators]
XcodeToolchain

And it can also be fully instantiated in the conanfile generate() method:

from conan import ConanFile
from conan.tools.apple import XcodeToolchain

class App(ConanFile):
    settings = "os", "arch", "compiler", "build_type"

    def generate(self):
        tc = XcodeToolchain(self)
        tc.generate()

The XcodeToolchain will generate three files after a conan install command. As explained above for the XcodeDeps generator, each different configuration will create a set of files with different names. For example, running conan install for Release first and then Debug configuration:

$ conan install conanfile.py # default is Release
$ conan install conanfile.py -s build_type=Debug

Will create these files:

.
├── conan_config.xcconfig
├── conantoolchain_release_x86_64.xcconfig
├── conantoolchain_debug_x86_64.xcconfig
├── conantoolchain.xcconfig
└── conan_global_flags.xcconfig

Those files are:

The main conan_config.xcconfig file, to be added to the project. Includes both the files from this generator and the generated by the XcodeDeps in case it was also set.
conantoolchain_<debug/release>_x86_64.xcconfig: declares CLANG_CXX_LIBRARY, CLANG_CXX_LANGUAGE_STANDARD and MACOSX_DEPLOYMENT_TARGET variables with conditional logic depending on the build configuration, architecture and sdk set.
conantoolchain.xcconfig: aggregates all the conantoolchain_<config>_<arch>.xcconfig files for the different installed configurations.
conan_global_flags.xcconfig: this file will only be generated in case of any configuration variables related to compiler or linker flags are set. Check the configuration section below for more details.

Every invocation to conan install with different configuration will create a new conantoolchain_<config>_<arch>.xcconfig file that is aggregated in the conantoolchain.xcconfig, so you can have different configurations included in your Xcode project.

The XcodeToolchain files can declare the following Xcode build settings based on Conan settings values:

MACOSX_DEPLOYMENT_TARGET is based on the value of the os.version setting and will make the build system to pass the flag -mmacosx-version-min with that value (if set). It defines the operating system version the binary should run into.
CLANG_CXX_LANGUAGE_STANDARD is based on the value of the compiler.cppstd setting that sets the C++ language standard.
CLANG_CXX_LIBRARY is based on the value of the compiler.libcxx setting and sets the version of the C++ standard library to use.

One of the advantages of using toolchains is that they can help to achieve the exact same build with local development flows, than when the package is created in the cache.

conf

This toolchain is also affected by these [conf] variables:

tools.build:cxxflags list of C++ flags.
tools.build:cflags list of pure C flags.
tools.build:sharedlinkflags list of flags that will be used by the linker when creating a shared library.
tools.build:exelinkflags list of flags that will be used by the linker when creating an executable.
tools.build:defines list of preprocessor definitions.

If you set any of these variables, the toolchain will use them to generate the conan_global_flags.xcconfig file that will be included from the conan_config.xcconfig file.

XcodeBuild

Available since: 1.46.0

The Xcode build helper is a wrapper around the command line invocation of Xcode. It will abstract the calls like xcodebuild -project app.xcodeproj -configuration <config> -arch <arch> ...

The Xcode helper can be used like:

from conan import ConanFile
from conan.tools.apple import XcodeBuild

class App(ConanFile):
    settings = "os", "arch", "compiler", "build_type"

    def build(self):
        xcodebuild = XcodeBuild(self)
        xcodebuild.build("app.xcodeproj")

Xcode.build() method

def build(self, xcodeproj, target=None):

xcodeproj: the xcodeproj file to build.
target: the target to build, in case this argument is passed to the build() method it will add the -target argument to the build system call. If not passed, it will build all the targets passing the -alltargets argument instead.

The Xcode.build() method internally implements a call to xcodebuild like:

$ xcodebuild -project app.xcodeproj -configuration <configuration> -arch <architecture> <sdk> <verbosity> -target <target>/-alltargets

Where:

configuration is the configuration, typically Release or Debug, which will be obtained from settings.build_type.
architecture is the build architecture, a mapping from the settings.arch to the common architectures defined by Apple ‘i386’, ‘x86_64’, ‘armv7’, ‘arm64’, etc.
sdk is set based on the values of the os.sdk and os.sdk_version defining the SDKROOT Xcode build setting according to them. For example, setting os.sdk=iOS and os.sdk_version=8.3` will pass SDKROOT=iOS8.3 to the build system. In case you defined the tools.apple:sdk_path in your [conf] this value will take preference and will directly pass SDKROOT=<tools.apple:sdk_path> so take into account that for this case the skd located in that path should set your os.sdk and os.sdk_version settings values.
verbosity is the verbosity level for the build and can take value ‘verbose’ or ‘quiet’ if set by tools.apple.xcodebuild:verbosity in your [conf]

conf

tools.apple.xcodebuild:verbosity verbosity value for the build, can be ‘verbose’ or ‘quiet’
tools.apple:sdk_path path for the sdk location, will set the SDKROOT value with preference over composing the value from the os.sdk and os.sdk_version settings.

conan.tools.apple.fix_apple_shared_install_name()

Available since: 1.49.0

def fix_apple_shared_install_name(conanfile):

Parameters:

conanfile: Conanfile instance.

This tool will search for all the dylib files in the conanfile’s package_folder and fix the library install names (the LC_ID_DYLIB header). Libraries and executables inside the package folder will also have the LC_LOAD_DYLIB fields updated to reflect the patched install names. Executables inside the package will also get an LC_RPATH entry pointing to the relative location of the libraries inside the package folder. This is done using the install_name_tool utility available in macOS, as outlined below:

For LC_ID_DYLIB which is the field containing the install name of the library, it will change the install name to one that uses the @rpath. For example, if the install name is /path/to/lib/libname.dylib, the new install name will be @rpath/libname.dylib. This is done by internally executing something like:

install_name_tool /path/to/lib/libname.dylib -id @rpath/libname.dylib

For LC_LOAD_DYLIB which is the field containing the path to the library dependencies, it will change the path of the dependencies to one that uses the @rpath. For example, if a binary has a dependency on /path/to/lib/dependency.dylib, this will be updated to be @rpath/dependency.dylib. This is done for both libraries and executables inside the package folder, invoking install_name_tool as below:

install_name_tool /path/to/lib/libname.dylib -change /path/to/lib/dependency.dylib @rpath/dependency.dylib

For LC_RPATH, in those cases in which the packages also contain binary executables that depend on libraries within the same package, entries will be added to reflect the location of the libraries relative to the executable. If a package has executables in the bin subfolder and libraries in the lib subfolder, this can be performed with an invocation like this:

install_name_tool /path/to/bin/my_executable -add_rpath @executable_path/../lib

This tool is typically needed by recipes that use Autotools as the build system and in the case that the correct install names are not fixed in the library being packaged. Use this tool, if needed, in the conanfile’s package() method like:

from conan.tools.apple import fix_apple_shared_install_name

class HelloConan(ConanFile):

  ...

  def package(self):
      autotools = Autotools(self)
      autotools.install()
      fix_apple_shared_install_name(self)

is_apple_os()

Available since: 1.51.3

def is_apple_os(conanfile):

Parameters:

conanfile: Conanfile instance.

This tool returns True if the OS is from Apple (Macos, iOS, watchOS or tvOS)

to_apple_arch()

Available since: 1.52.0

def to_apple_arch(conanfile):

Parameters:

conanfile: Conanfile instance.

Converts the current Conan-style arch setting (in the _host_ context) to a value understood by different Apple build tools (e.g. armv8 -> arm64).

XCRun()

Available since: 1.53.0

XCRun is a wrapper for the Apple xcrun tool used to get information for building.

class XCRun(object):

    def __init__(self, conanfile, sdk=None, use_settings_target=False):

Parameters:

conanfile: Conanfile instance.
sdk: Will skip the flag when False is passed and will try to adjust the sdk it automatically if None is passed.
use_settings_target: If True it will try to use the settings from the target. When False it will use the settings from the active context. Read more about the settings_target in the cross-building section.

Public attributes and properties

Public attributes:

settings: Set of settings used to get the sdk. They can be the settings from the target if use_settings_target=True or the settings from the active context if use_settings_target=False.

Public properties:

sdk_path: Obtain SDK path (a.k.a. Apple sysroot or -isysroot).

sdk_version: Obtain SDK version.

sdk_platform_path: Obtain SDK platform path.

sdk_platform_version: Obtain SDK platform version.

cc: Path to C compiler (CC).

cxx: Path to C++ compiler (CXX).

ar: Path to archiver (AR).

ranlib: Path to archive indexer (RANLIB).

strip: Path to symbol removal utility (STRIP).