XcodeBuild¶

The XcodeBuild 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 XcodeBuild 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")

Reference¶

class XcodeBuild(conanfile)¶

__init__(conanfile)¶

XcodeBuild.build(xcodeproj, target=None, configuration=None, cli_args=None)¶

Call to xcodebuild to build a Xcode project.

Parameters:

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.
configuration – Build configuration to use (e.g., Debug, Release). Defaults to the recipe’s settings.build_type.
cli_args – Extra options to pass directly to xcodebuild (list of strings). Examples: ["-xcconfig", "<path/to/file.xcconfig>"] or custom Xcode build settings like ["BUILD_LIBRARY_FOR_DISTRIBUTION=YES"].

Returns:

the return code for the launched xcodebuild command.

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

$ xcodebuild -project app.xcodeproj -configuration <configuration> -arch <architecture> <sdk> <verbosity> -target <target>/-alltargets *_DEPLOYMENT_TARGET=settings.os.version <cli_args>

Where:

configuration is the configuration, typically Release or Debug, which will be obtained from settings.build_type unless you pass it explicitly via the configuration parameter.
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.build:verbosity in your [conf]

cli_args are the additional command line arguments passed via the cli_args parameter. These can include custom build settings like BUILD_LIBRARY_FOR_DISTRIBUTION=YES. You can also redirect build artifacts to the Conan build folder by passing SYMROOT and OBJROOT settings:

def build(self):
  xcodebuild = XcodeBuild(self)
  xcodebuild.build("app.xcodeproj", cli_args=[f"SYMROOT={self.build_folder}",
                                              f"OBJROOT={self.build_folder}"])

Additional parameters that are passed to xcodebuild (but before cli_args):

Deployment target setting according to the values of os and os.version from profile, e.g. MACOSX_DEPLOYMENT_TARGET=10.15 or IPHONEOS_DEPLOYMENT_TARGET=15.0

conf¶

tools.build:verbosity (or tools.compilation:verbosity as fallback) which accepts quiet or verbose, and sets the -verbose or -quiet flags in XcodeBuild.install()
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.