Chapter 12: Working with Builds, Schemes, and Workspaces

In This Chapter

Getting started with the Xcode build system Understanding settings and options Editing schemes and build configurations Managing schemes, build actions, and targets

So far in this book, builds have been treated as one-click processes, and projects have been treated as stand-alone collections of files.

But it's a key feature of Xcode that the build process is almost infinitely customizable. Instead of treating the build process as a black box that takes source files and converts them into an app, you can break the build process into steps, change the settings and outputs from each step, or even add completely new steps—for example, to create hybrid projects with code written in other languages.

You also can combine projects and files in various ways to create hybrid builds that share related code; for example, you can develop a framework and a project that tests it or uses it at the same time.

In Xcode 3, this kind of mixed build was difficult to manage. In Xcode 4, sharing code between projects has been simplified with a new workspace system that makes it easy to work on multiple related projects simultaneously.

This chapter outlines the key features of the Xcode 4 build system and introduces the editors and options that control the build process.

Chapter 13 introduces some practical examples of build customization and explores more advanced build control options.

Getting Started with the Xcode Build ...

Get Xcode® 4 now with the O’Reilly learning platform.

O’Reilly members experience books, live events, courses curated by job role, and more from O’Reilly and nearly 200 top publishers.