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Building and shipping Mac and iOS apps without opening Xcode

原网页

Article URL: https://scottwillsey.com/building-and-shipping-mac-and-ios-apps-without-ever-opening-xcode/

Comments URL: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=48896665

Points: 354

# Comments: 152

Hacker News 讨论

354 points · 152 comments · 查看原帖

  1. searls

    I've been using agents to develop Mac and iOS apps for over a year now and I would say this post is bad advice, particularly because the excellent Xcode MCP requires Xcode to be running. The MCP tool gives you faster, better access to a number of functions for which xcodebuild is much slower and much chattier and a number of others (like the #Preview generation and rendering) that aren't possible at all while Xcode is closed. Also, in Xcode 27, the MCP & built-in agents are able to drive simulators with DeviceHub extremely well. (If you haven't been following, DeviceHub replaces Simulator.app and as far as I can tell, it's actually scrutable by agents without relying on hacking at the accessibility APIs with tools like axe.) Xcode MCP is not perfect, by any stretch (stupidly, it issues a permission prompt on every single agent launch—something I defeated with a Keyboard Maestro hack to a

  2. codazoda

    One down-side to this is that it does require you to run the agent on your Mac instead of in a Sandbox. I do this too and there are lots of problems I can't solve in a sandbox. I know a lot of you are throwing your hands up at the years of security practices we're throwing out the window when we do that. The fact that xAI uploaded someone's home directory, including their SSH keys, is giving me serious pause at my choices here. Generally, I don't worry about my machine being "blown up". I don't have a TON of unreproducible stuff on my machine. Everything is backed up, committed to git, and the like. I can restore most of it in a couple hours. That said, I really, really don't want my .SSH directory sent to an AI agent and it's silly to prompt your way around that. You need to block it at the system level. I'm considering a separate user and then 700 permissions on my home directory. I fe

  3. kxxx

    I've been building and testing my iOS app just for fun via Linux only. Surprisingly, it's very easy. This works like a charm: https://github.com/xtool-org/xtool You do not need to upload to TestFlight or the App Store; you can just install the app locally to your iPhone via usb -- even from Linux! When in doubt, just ask your coding agent of choice to help you create and upload a Hello World iOS app. It's really easy.

  4. CharlesW

    If it's okay to mention my own complementary open source project, Axiom¹ does a good job of helping coding harnesses know how to do this effectively for Apple OS development. In addition to a deep roster of skills and agencts, Axiom includes several for-LLM tools². xclog , xcprof , xcsym , and xcui are designed to be used by LLMs, and expose capabilities in a token-efficient way. These tools are equally helpful for non-Axiom skills/agents. ¹ Axiom: https://charleswiltgen.github.io/Axiom/ ² Axiom CLI tools: https://charleswiltgen.github.io/Axiom/tools/

  5. Tiberium

    It's kind of funny to be reading this: > I had Claude Code create mine: I told Claude, more or less: I want to archive, Developer ID-sign, notarize, staple, and install this app to /Applications without ever opening Xcode. Write me a script that does the whole chain and fails loudly if any step breaks. Even though the text we're reading is Claude talking to us as well :) Also it was weird to see the mention of "ask your LLM" at almost every stage in the blog post: > point Claude Code or your LLM coding tool of choice to this blog post, and let it figure it out > When in doubt, ask your LLM of choice about them and have it help you get set up. It’s the one that’s going to be using Xcode for you anyway. > The whole point of using the LLM in the first place is to avoid doing things manually that you don’t want to do. > Again, if in doubt, ask Claude Code or your LLM of choice to create this

  6. gnachman

    Not using Xcode is the greatest improvement in quality of life I have known aside from recovering from a debilitating back injury. So good.

  7. ChrisMarshallNY

    Technically, you are using Xcode. Xcode is a [buggy as hell] GUI wrapper for a lot of system-level UNIX utilities and apps [which are generally, not so buggy]. Using CLI to release apps is a pretty old practice; at least as long as I've been doing it (I released my first Xcode app in 2012).

  8. WhitneyLand

    Everyone will still need to use Xcode for at least some debugging, no way around that. As for the builds, your agent probably already knows how to do a lot of this from the command line, although explicit suggestions can help it build faster for different situations. As for XcodeGen, you may find it unnecessary overhead if you're already using Xcode file system synced groups. For iOS my biggest suggestion would be to enable App Store Connect skills for your agent ( https://github.com/rorkai/App-Store-Connect-CLI ). With this not only do you not need Xcode all the time, you also don't even need to be near a MacBook. Just make changes via Codex on your iPhone, the tell asc to build and upload to TestFlight, download and run the new version, iterate.