I have an iphone app working just fine - it basically just displays news from a feed, but now we want to have a second app that is a clone of the first but branded a different way and displaying news from a different feed - the xml feed and the graphics/colors would be the only difference.
I'm trying to not duplicate any effort. I can easily set a define and build the app using different colors and images and the xml feed url with one codebase. But what is the preferred way to do this so that I can make a change to some common code and easily rebuild both apps and get them updated in the app store without maintaining separate xcode projects, separate files, etc?
You can do this easily by adding a new target to your project.
Create unique branded assets and configuration files with identical names, but keep them in different folders. When you're ready, add each folder to the project and set the "Target Membership" to the appropriate target. If you make a mistake, you can change it in the File Inspector pane.
When you build a specific target from the shared codebase, only those resources will be bundled with the app. As long as the filenames are identical, it should work.
You can use one project with more then one target. For each target you can add different resources (Info.plist, icon, etc.).
XML feed can be defined in settings.bundle (which also can be dependent on the target).
Layout you can read from dictionary, which also should be dependent on the target.
Related
I wanted to add a WatchKit Extension (with SwiftUI supported on iOS13+) to my existing app (target iOS12) while keeping both codebase separated (two repos).
How can I separate the WatchKit Extension code from the Mobile One?
Will my Watch App with SwiftUI only work for users with WatchOS 6 and iOS13 without affecting the existing users with iOS12?
How about the app binary size increase?
Thanks for reading!
I am not sure if there is a simpler solution, but this one should work:
Separation of both apps:
If you open in Xcode the Source Control navigator, you see that Branches, Tags and Remotes belong to a main entry in the Project navigator, i.e. to a Xcode project. So in order to have separate repos, you need separate Xcode projects to which you can assign separate repos.
You can however have multiple projects in one workspace, so that all files are available in this workspace.
To have one standalone app, and one app with a watch extension, just setup a workspace with your standalone app, and add another new project. This new project needs all files of the original app plus the watch extension.
Since you need files from one project also in the other, you could drag them from one project to the new one, but then they will be copied (a green + badge is shown during dragging). Usually this is not what you want, since you usually don’t want to maintain two copies separately. Instead, you can show such a file in the finder, and then drag it from the finder to the new project. In this case, you have the option only to copy the reference.
Independence of both apps:
Since you have two separate projects, you can set the deployment target in the target’s build settings as required.
Size:
Each project will get separate products, the standalone app only an xxx.app, and the new project xxx.app, Watch.app, and Watch Extension.appex. So there should be no overhead.
EDIT (due to the comment of Ouadie in his question):
I am not sure if I understand your problem:
With the procedure above, you get a single workspace with two separate projects that share part of the files.
The „mobile project“ is the same as you use right now. It has only a single target (despite of test targets) that is built exclusively with the sources required. It has thus the same size as now.
The „watch project“ is new. It has 3 targets, the „mobile“ target, the Watch target, and the Watch Extension target (despite of test targets). It is built with the shared sources, and the additional watch extension sources. Its size is thus larger, but the increase depends of course on your sources.
Since you have 2 repos, the projects are decoupled, but both repos share some files. If you want to decouple them completely, you could copy the files from your current project to your new project (instead of copying only references), but then you had to maintain 2 copies.
I hope this helps!
I am trying to use the approach of having a single project that uses different targets with different plist files. However, each target has a different set of launch and icon images. I cant however use a duplicate set of these since adding a duplicate image when the same name gives the error that its already in use. Is there anyway around this in xcode?
To save the file, either provide a different name, or move aside or delete the existing file, and try again.
You should use Xcode 5's assets catalogs. You can define a different assets catalog for each target, and in each assets catalog you can define different launch images. Names are handled by the content generator.
You can mix asset catalogs, so you can have, for example, one shared catalog for shared images, and individual ones for each different target, where you can have distinct icons and launch images.
OK, so I have changed my approach and found the easiest and a simple solution which I ignored before. All you have to do is keep the file names same but keep the files in different folders. And when adding them to project, check the target to which the files belong to and uncheck other targets. See the image.
I thought it would be interesting to attempt building multiple apps using the same code base, where the only differentiating data is held in a few plists. For example, one plist holds some theme info - a few key/values to drive the color scheme used in the app. I'll call the original version of this theme.plist.
I soon learned that I should create multiple targets in my project, and have been able to add these successfully. Each one, via it's own appname-info.plist, has a different name and bundle id - it's neat seeing all three on my home screen without any real extra work.
But right now they are all identical. I haven't figured out how to use a different set of data for each one.
My first thought was to have some folder for each target - each with its own theme plist named theme.plist - and somehow distribute each target with a different folder. But researching that idea doesn't get me much google juice.
So what about multiple theme files? Ok, so far that looks better - I can create an app1-theme.plist and 'app2-theme.plist' with different values for the same keys in each. And Xcode even lets me use some flags to say which targets should include each resource.
But I don't know how to load the appropriate plist at runtime. I need to examine something (the bundle ID?) and then assign the appropriate name of the theme plist to something (what)?
It seems like this might have something to with #ifdef, whatever that might be...?
Can someone explain how I should be looking to accomplish this? Am I on the right track? I'm happy to put some reading time in but I don't even know what to look up yet.
You are just about there. Xcode supports having multiple files with the same name in a project, one way you can do this by storing them in different folders within your project folder.
Unfortunately at this point Xcode won't give you a lot of help, so open your project in the Finder, create one subfolder for each of your apps, in those folders place a copy of the plist. Now add each copy in turn to your project, making sure you add each to just one of your targets.
You might want to create a group in Xcode called, say, "Theme files", to keep them altogether.
HTH
What you are trying to do is trivial. If you select a file from your project, and bring up the "File Inspector" in the utilities area (Press Command option 1) you should see a section "Target membership". Each target in your project will be listed, with a checkbox next to it. If you check the checkbox for a file and target, that file is built into that target. Un-check the checkbox for a file and target and that file is not copied over to the specified target (you may need to run a clean, and delete the app from the target device, to get rid of files that used to be included but that you have un-checked. Xcode generally won't automatically remove things that used to be included.
You could create a directory in your bundle and teach your app to scan that directory for plist files. Then include a different set of files in that directory for each target and each target app's behavior will change.
I have a project that I maintain for a client; let's call it MyDataAssistant. When the project goes into beta, the client likes to have a "separate app" built for them, which I create using a different provisioning profile and a modified bundle identifier (MyDataAssistant-BETA). It's a pain to always be going back and forth and changing the bundle identifier, code signature settings, and especially the icon. I understand that you can have multiple targets and multiple build settings (within each target?) in a project, but I'm not clear on what the difference is, or how to use them appropriately.
Additionally, the client would like a third version with read-only capabilities. I can accomplish this by just making a flag return from a certain part of my code, but I would like it if that flag could be toggled in the build (target?) settings.
Please advise on how to manage this kind of project with multiple "variations" of the build.
Add a new configuration to your project by duplicating the release one for example.
Give it a name "Beta"
Add a User-defined build setting
Call it MY_DATA_ASSISTANT_BUNDLE_ID_SUFFIX for example and set the value to be -BETA only for the Beta configuration.
Edit the MyDataAssistant-info.plist file by setting the bundle identifier to com.YOURCOMPANYNAME.MyDataAssistant$(MY_DATA_ASSISTANT_BUNDLE_ID_SUFFIX)
This will make it have different values for the different configurations.
You can also set the display name to have a different value by setting it to $(PRODUCT_NAME)$(MY_DATA_ASSISTANT_BUNDLE_ID_SUFFIX)
Set the right provisioning profile for each configuration. (Of course after creating the beta one in the provisioning portal as if it was for a new app with the bundle identifier having the suffix "-BETA")
Create a new scheme!
Give it a name: MyDataAssistant-BETA
Change its build configuration to "Beta" for all the actions and you should be ready to go.
If you want to have different icons for the beta version you can use the $(MY_DATA_ASSISTANT_BUNDLE_ID_SUFFIX) in the MyDataAssistant-info.plist file for the icons names and of course add them to the target.
I would recommend creating two targets. This will allow you to share what files you want between variations, as well as have custom source, or config files in each. The simplest implementation of this would be to have an identical target except for the info.plist file.
Simply right click on your current app target in project settings, and hit duplicate.
I'm trying to write two separate submittable apps: one for iPad and the other for iPhone. This necessitates having two separate plists to allow independently specifying different app icons, launch images, etc.
When I try to rename my Info.plist, MonoDevelop autocreates a new empty Info.plist and uses that instead. By the same token, I can't seem to move my Info.plist to the iPad/ subfolder and have MD pick it up there.
Currently we have 3 projects in 1 solution: iPad, iPhone, common files and libraries.
Is the only solution to have separate .sln files in the appropriate subfolders, or can I still somehow build two separate apps from one .sln?
EDIT: Project structure is below if that helps visualise the problem.
MyApp.sln
MyApp-iPad.csproj
MyApp-iPhone.csproj
MyApp-Common.csproj
Main.cs
AppDelegate-iPad.cs
AppDelegate-iPhone.cs
Info.plist (MD currently uses this for both projects)
Common/
iPad/
iPad/Info.plist (for -iPad.csproj)
iPhone/
iPhone/Info.plist (for -iPhone.csproj)
Here's my current and very ordinary solution: Add a custom command that runs Before Build
cp iPad/Info.plist Info.plist
And for iPhone:
cp iPhone/Info.plist Info.plist
I have a project where I need to be able to build the application with different icons and resources.
I use different build profiles and build scripts that copy in the correct files into a resources folder. This also changes the application name and identifier.
This is a similar solution to yours, but it would allow you to bundle different images with your application like you wanted.
You need to make 2 projects, one for iPad and one for iPhone.
You should "link-in" all the code files from one project to the other. You can have different Info.plist files, icons, images, etc. with this route.
Here is a link talking about various strategies: http://docs.xamarin.com/ios/Guides/Application_Fundamentals/Building_Cross_Platform_Applications/Sharing_Code_Options