iOS Build Environment Help Center
For those of you who are sick of having to update XCode on your Mac just to get the new SDK, here is a repo that will let you do it via Windows/Ubuntu. It's a bit involved but beats waiting 45min for the Mac to download XCode only for it to fail during installation. Whereas I can download the .xip in under 5.
https://github.com/HauntedOatmeal/ios_sdk
Works as of version 3.53 of iOS Builder. Requires Win10/11 or Ubuntu
Hello @Disparate,
Thank you for your very nice contribution. It's true that this whole process as described in the builder's help file could be greatly simplified by downloading the Xcode xip directly and extracting it, but I have a good reason to leave it this way : it ensures the user has a macOS machine at hand, because this is a legal prerequisite by Apple for deploying the iOS SDK (although this legal prerequisite is deemed abusive and not enforceable in some countries - e.g. France and others -, many consider it valid).
But, there's already a "unxip.exe" tool that I provide in the iOS builder's Toolchain directory that can extract the Xcode .xip files. This spares you from the need to build xar, libssl and pbzx. Unxip is enough and self-contained. That could simplify your procedure quite a lot.
Thanks for sharing anyway :)
Even better, thanks!
unxip.exe fails to extract Xcode_14.1.xip on my machine though.
When running with the suggested argument `-f Xcode.app/Contents/Developer/Platforms/iPhoneOS.platform/Developer/SDKs` it takes a while and extracts quite a few files but finally fails with
`unxip: error: xar_extract_tostream() returned 1`
When running without any argument it fails pretty quickly with
`fatal error: process_cpio_stream(): mkdir failed for directory: "code.app/Contents/Developer/Platforms/AppleTVOS.platform/Developer/Library/Xcode/Templates/Project Templates/tvOS/Application/Core Data TV App.xctemplate/___PACKAGENAMEASIDENTIFIER___.xcdatamodeld/___PACKAGENAMEASIDENTIFIER___.xcdatamodel" with errno 2`
The latter is just a problem with the filesystem's limitations I guess. Still I do not know how to remedy this.
You might be hitting the NTFS path limit (260 characters). Try unpacking the Xcode xip file in a folder that's close to the filesystem root (e.g. in "C:\")
Let me know if it helps. I might need to rewrite the tool so as to handle very long paths (that would be a hassle - thank you so much Microsoft).
Thought that was it but it isn't. I already enabled the "long paths" via gpedit.msc and moved from a fairly long path to a pretty short one (something like "C:\iossdk") but it still fails at the same file.
I had a look at it. When xar_extract_tostream() returns 1 it means the end of stream has been reached. This is not an error when the expected number of bytes have been extracted, but the fact that it popped up prevented the last chunk of the archive from being extracted correctly. I've fixed the unxip utility and in the next version you should be able to extract the Xcode .xip with the `-f Xcode.app/Contents/Developer/Platforms/iPhoneOS.platform/Developer/SDKs` argument without this error popping up at the end.
*edit* It'll be in the upcoming 3.54 release (the official, not the beta).
Good to know, thanks!
Update: it's now in the beta that I uploaded today. https://www.pmbaty.com/iosbuildenv/iosbuilder.php?beta=1
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