Creating a simulator build

[ibrahima]

Hi! I've gotten Xtool working to build my iOS app, but it's not running on my iPad. I have been trying out this service called Appetize which provides cloud iOS simulators. But when I upload the build to the site it says the build was meant for a physical device, not a simulator, and doesn't start. I built with xtool dev build --triple arm64-apple-ios-simulator so I feel like it should create a simulator compatible build, right?

As a side note I wonder if the app isn't working because it uses storyboards. Does xtool support those somehow/do I need to configure it to use the storyboard?

[gru2007]

You can try to build iOS app for x86_64 architecture

[ibrahima]

Hm, no such luck. But I'm realizing that perhaps the metadata shown on Appetize can help figure out what's wrong.

This is for my running app build with Xcode

This is for the Xtool build with ARM:

And this is Xtool for x86_64:

Seems like it doesn't have the right platform name, supported platforms, or SDK set. Not sure how to fix those things, wonder if it's just Info.plist entries?

[ibrahima]

Ah okay, I got past that screen by adding in these keys to the generated Info.plist:

	<key>CFBundleSupportedPlatforms</key>
	<array>
    <string>iPhoneSimulator</string>
	</array>
	<key>DTPlatformName</key>
	<string>iphonesimulator</string>

I tried adding it to the custom info.plist but I think the default CFBundleSupportedPlatforms does not get replaced with the custom value so it doesn't fully work that way. That seems like an issue that should be fixed; I should be able to override any default values with my custom Info.plist. Though I think it would be even more ideal to choose the correct values if building for a simulator target.

[kabiroberai]

I think this is a bug with xtool, yes. We currently hardcode CFBundleSupportedPlatforms to iPhoneOS which seems to be accepted just fine by the iOS Simulator but might trip up services with stricter validation checks.

xtool/Sources/PackLib/Packer.swift

Line 182 in 22655f3

info["CFBundleSupportedPlatforms"] = ["iPhoneOS"]

I’ll create an issue to track this.

[ibrahima]

Thanks!

[kabiroberai]

#191 for reference. Also to answer the question about storyboards, xtool doesn't support storyboards/Interface Builder atm yeah. I'd recommend programmatic layout instead if you're comfortable with those APIs.