I have one target A that just runs a script and generates a bunch of files (localization files via twine). Other targets that copy these localization files have a target dependency on A so that they don't run before the files are generated.
Somehow, this doesn't work. Even though the files are all generated successfully, and I see that the copy files phases are running later, the files aren't found.
Also this only fails when I do a clean build. On the second build, the generated files already exist and the copies complete successfully.
For example, my script runs this:
bundle exec twine generate-all-localization-files Strings/ExtensionStrings.txt MyExtension/Resources --format apple --create-folders --tags ios
find /Users/me/proj/myapp -name Localizable.strings
I see it output /Users/me/proj/myapp/MyExtension/Resources/zh-Hans.lproj/Localizable.strings early on in the build process, then later on I see this:
builtin-copyStrings --validate --outputencoding binary --outdir /Users/me/Library/Developer/Xcode/DerivedData/myapp-adfoisdfnasdao/Build/Products/Debug-iphonesimulator/MyExtension.appex/zh-Hans.lproj -- /Users/me/proj/myapp/MyExtension/Resources/zh-Hans.lproj/Localizable.strings
error: Build input file cannot be found: '/Users/me/proj/myapp/MyExtension/Resources/zh-Hans.lproj/Localizable.strings'
And again, if I build a second time it works. What the heck is going on? I'm guessing this has something to do with Xcode 10's parallel builds but I thought that putting the generation/copy in separate targets with a dependency between them would solve that problem.
Related
After updating to Xcode 10 there are some issues with initial project configurations. The steps look like this:
Generating some files using Sourcery
Linting with SwiftLint
Build
And configuration works like this:
And this was working fine in Xcode 9, but apparently, it's not working under Xcode 10 build system. The issue is if I download repository (.generated files are not a part of the repository). And hit build it will show me results like:
...
Using configuration file at '.sourcery.yml'
Scanning sources...
Found 239 types.
Loading templates...
Loaded 9 templates.
Generating code...
Finished.
Processing time 0.491948962211609 seconds
...
So sourcery works ok, then linting:
Linting 'FromResponse.generated.swift' (1/186)
Works fine as well as a process, but in the end, build will fail with:
error: Build input files cannot be found:
'/path/Generated/FromResponse.generated.swift',
...
So it's strange since a files are physically there and according to build settings file should be compiled later than generating them. How should I approach sourcery in build process then?
We are able to "fix" this in a similar way as this Github issue:
https://github.com/mac-cain13/R.swift/issues/438#issuecomment-416982928
We have to add each of the generated files by Sourcery to the output folder and it will get picked up by the Xcode correctly.
This relates to changes in the New Xcode Build System that has been enabled by default in Xcode 10. If a build phase creates files which are needed as an input to a later build phase then it needs to specify them explicitly in the Output Files or Output File List.
In your example the Sourcery build phase is generating Swift source file(s) which are needed as input to the Compile Sources phase.
However, the issue at this point is that after you specify the output files for Sourcery, the build phase doesn't re-run every time as it sees the output file is already there. So far I haven't worked out a useable solution to this part, beyond running tools like Sourcery and SwiftGen manually or keeping the generated files in Git so that they are always present.
I was having a similar problem with a buildphase calling mogenerator to build my data model classes. The approach given by #Yuchen should work.
#Andrew: To force always (re-)running this build phase, I add the line
touch .alwaysRun
as the last line in the shell command to run and mark the build phase "Input Files" to have $(SRCROOT)/.alwaysRun. That seems to do the trick.
In TFS the Build number format usually looks something like this:
$(BuildDefinitionName)_$(Date:yyyyMMdd)$(Rev:.r)
However, I only want to retain 1 build and I would like it to build to the same folder each time. So I tried changing it to this:
$(BuildDefinitionName)
But the problem is that this only works one time, then gives an error that the build number already exists after that. I would like to build to the same folder so that I can write a script to zip the latest build, move it to another place, and then unzip it and it would just be much easier if I didn't have to deal with writing code to figure out what the most recent folder name is.
Is there a way to accomplish building to a folder name that doesn't change?
This is by designed, every completed build should has a unique build number/name. Otherwise you will get the error above.
$(Rev:.r)
Use $(Rev:.rr) to ensure that every completed build has a unique
name. When a build is completed, if nothing else in the build number
has changed, the Rev integer value is incremented by one.
As a workaround: For vNext build, you could use a copy Files task to copy the build output to the same folder during the build pipeline. To make sure you will always only get the latest build, you could add a powershell script before the copy task to clean/delete files in that special target folder.
For XAML build you need to customize the build template and add the default CopyDirectory activity in build template to copy the build result to the specified drop location. The detailed steps please refer to this blog. Also add a pre-build script to do the clean operation.
Is it possible to make TeamCity only clean up certain files upon fetching files from my git repo? I modify one file as a build step, and thus always need a clean version of that file. However, it's really unnecessary to fetch the whole repo everytime because usually only a few files are modified (thus, I'd rather not use the 'Clean all files before build' command).
Thanks!
To clarify, lets say I have the following structure:
- index.html
- js/script.js
- js/plugins.js
I only want to always (regardless if any change has happened) to checkout index.html. The files in the js folder I only want to replace whenever any updates on them have happened.
If you are using TeamCity 6.5 or above you can use the Build Files Cleaner (Swabra) Build Feature. Once you have added it your build steps and run clean build it will clean any new unversioned files generated during the build either before the new build starts or at the end of the current build.
I personally prefer to run it before the new build starts as it allows you to look at any of the output when trying to work out why something went wrong.
Basically it makes sure that there is nothing in the build agents work folder that was not pulled from the repository before each build.
Xcode 4 builds everything into $HOME/Library/Developer/Xcode/DerivedData/$PROJECT-$UUID, where $UUID is a seemingly random string (it's not really random, it just looks random).
How can I reliably detect the $PROJECT-$UUID part of the above? I've seen a script (https://gist.github.com/949831) that guesses by assuming it is the last modified directory in DerivedData -- but that's not true if my CI machine is building a few projects in parallel.
Nobody answered, so I kept looking for ideas until I found the one below, which satisfies my needs. It can be further modified to be even safer.
In Xcode, add a run-script build phase to the target (the main target, if building a few for the same project).
In the script, put this line:
ln -sf "$BUILD_DIR" BuildDir
Now, when the target is built a symlink to the project's DerivedData directory will be created in the project directory.
If desirable, you can also/instead create BuildDir as a file who's content is the $BUILD_DIR:
echo "$BUILD_DIR" > BuildDir
Then in a script use $(cat BuildDir) to retrieve it.
What I did:
I have a script that
Read some configuration files to generate source code snippets
Find relevant Objective-C source files and
Replace some portions of the source code with the generated code in step 1.
and a Makefile that has a special timestamp file as a make target and the configuration files as target sources:
SRC = $(shell find ../config -iname "*.txt")
STAMP = $(PROJECT_TEMP_DIR)/$(CONFIGURATION)$(EFFECTIVE_PLATFORM_NAME).stamp
$(STAMP): $(SRC)
python inject.py
touch $(STAMP)
I added this Makefile as a "Run Script Build Phase" on top of the stack of build phases for the project target.
What happened:
The script build phase was run before compiling the source.
However, since the script modifies source code during its execution, I needed to build twice to get the most recent version of the build product. Here is what I imagine to be happening:
1st run: Xcode collects dependency information ---> no changes
1st run: Xcode runs "Run Script Build Phase" ---> source is changed behind Xcode's back
1st run: Xcode finishes build, thinking nothing needs to be updated
2nd run: Xcode collects dependency information ---> source has changed, needs rebuild!
2nd run: Xcode runs Run Script Build Phase" ---> everything is up-to-date
2nd run: Xcode proceeds to compilation
After reading Xcode documentation on Build Phases, I tried adding a source file which is known to be updated every time the script is run as the output of "Run Script Build Phases", but nothing changed. Since the number of configuration files may vary in my project, I don't want to specify every input and output file.
Question:
How do I make Xcode aware of source file changes made during "Run Script Build Phase"?
Edit:
Added that I placed the script build phase before the other build phases
Every technique mentioned so far is an overkill. Reproducing steve kim's comment for visibility:
In the build phases tab, simply drag the "Run Script" step to a higher location (e.g. before "Compile Sources").
Tested on Xcode 6
This solution is probably outdated. See the higher voted answer instead; I no longer actively use Xcode and am not qualified to vet a solution.
Use "External Target":
Select "Project" > "New Target..." from the menu
Select "Mac OS X" > "Other" > "External Target" and add it to your project
Open its settings and fill in your script setup
Open the "General" tab of the main target's settings and add the new target as it's direct dependency
Now the new "External Target" runs before the main target even starts gathering dependency information, so that any changes made during the script execution should be included in the build.
There is another, slightly simpler option that doesn't require a separate target, but it's only viable if your script tends to modify the same source files every time.
First, here's a brief explanation for anyone who's confused about why Xcode sometimes requires you to build twice (or do a clean build) to see certain changes reflected in your target app. Xcode compiles a source file if the object file it produces is missing, or if the object file's last-modified date is earlier than the source file's last-modified date was at the beginning of the first build phase. If your project runs a script that modifies a source file in a pre-compilation build phase, Xcode won't notice that the source file's last-modified date has changed, so it won't bother to recompile it. It's only when you build the project a second time that Xcode will notice the date change and recompile the file.
Here's a simple solution if your script happens to modify the same source files every time. Just add a Run Script build phase at the end of your build process like this:
touch Classes/FirstModifiedFile.m Classes/SecondModifiedFile.m
exit $?
Running touch on these source files at the end of your build process guarantees that they will always have a later last-modified date than their object files, so Xcode will recompile them every time.
As of Xcode 4, it looks like if you add the generated files to the output section of the build phase, it will respect that setting, and not generate the ... has been modified since the precompiled header was built error messages.
This is a good option if your script is only generating a handful of files each time.
I as well struggled with this for a long time. The answer is to use ento's "External Target" solution. He is WHY this problem occurs and how we use it in practice...
Xcode 4 build steps do not execute until AFTER the plist has been compiled. This is silly, of course, because it means that any pre-build steps that modify the plist won't take effect. But if you think about it, they actually DO take effect...on the NEXT build. That's why some people have talked about "caching" of plist values or "I have to do 2 builds to make it work." What happens is the plist is built, then your script runs. Next time you build, the plist builds using your modified files, hence the second build.
ento's solution is the one way I've found to actually do a true pre-build step. Unfortunately I also found that it does not cause the plist to update without a clean build and I fixed that. Here is how we have data-driven user values in the plist:
Add an External Build System project that points to a python script and passes some arguments
Add user-defined build settings to the build. These are the arguments that you pass to python (more on why we do this later)
The python script reads some input JSON files and builds a plist preprocessor header file AND touches the main app plist
The main project has "preprocess plist files" turned on and points to this preprocessor file
Using touch on the main app plist file causes the main target to generate the plist every time. The reason we pass in build settings as parameters is so our command-line build can override settings:
Add a user-defined variable "foo" to the prebuild project.
In your prebuild you can use $(foo) to pass the value into the python script.
On the command-line you can add foo=test to pass in a new value.
The python script uses base settings files and allows for user-defined settings files to override the defaults. You make a change and immediately it ends up in the plist. We only use this for settings that MUST be in the plist. For anything else it's a waste of effort....generate a json file or something similar instead and load it at run-time :)
I hope this helps...it's been a couple rough days figuring this out.
The External Target solution from #ento no longer works as of Xcode 11.5. The solution is to add all files that will be changed under Output Files in the Run Script.
Another option is to create a subproject framework with your scripts and just add it as a dependency to all targets. The phase scripts of this subproject should now be executed before all targets.