Issue 11
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Hey everyone! 👋 Welcome to the eleventh issue of the iOS CI Newsletter. I hope you’ve all had a fantastic couple of weeks!
I have been pretty busy over the past couple of weeks working on my talk for NYSwifty in April, where I will speak about Xcode Cloud. I will not only be covering the basics, but I will also show you how to tackle complex use cases and how to expand Xcode Cloud’s functionalities with the use of webhooks and server-side Swift applications.
Worry not if you can’t make the talk though, as I will be posting a number of articles in the run-up to the conference on my blog, so make sure you keep an eye on it if you want to learn more about Xcode Cloud 👀.
🔀 Managing multiple versions of Xcode using Fastlane
I have recently written a CI/CD related article on my blog and thought I would share it in this week’s newsletter. As of the release of Fastlane 2.211.0 and an awesome contribution by Roger Oba, one of the tool’s core contributors, there have been some changes to the way you select a specific Xcode version on CI using Fastlane.
Worry not though, I go through all the changes and what the currently available options are in my article 🎉
⚡️ 12-core GitHub-hosted macOS runners
Earlier this month, GitHub announced the introduction of new Intel-based 12-core macOS runners. This is a massive step up from their current macOS runners, which only have 3 cores available.
Unfortunately, the public beta is only available for enterprises and organisations on the team or enterprise plan at the moment. If you meet these requirements and you try the feature, let me know how you find it!
🚨 An important update to the Xcodes CLI
In the last issue of the newsletter, I mentioned that Fastlane fixed a bug where Apple ID sign-in in App Store Connect could result in an account being locked out 😱.
The Xcodes CLI was also impacted by this issue as it needs to authenticate with App Store Connect to download Xcode versions. Similarily to what Fastlane did, the team has taken action and released a new version that prevents this issue from happening. If you use Xcodes regularly, make sure you update to version 1.3.0 of the CLI.
☁️ Manny’s Xcode Cloud setup
This article by Zachary is a great read if you want to learn how a real-world application uses Xcode Cloud.
The article goes through what the setup of Zachary’s app Manny, a delightful Mastodon client, looks like and what workflows Xcode Cloud runs to ensure the app is swiftly and safely delivered to all its users.
🚀 How to build custom Fastlane actions
Building a Fastlane action can seem daunting at first if you’ve never built one before, but I can guarantee you it’s very simple and can be very powerful if you want to reuse your Fastlane code across multiple projects.
Jared goes through how to build a custom Fastlane action in great detail on Runway’s blog. 👏
💬 Stack Overflow CI/CD collective
This week I discovered when I was looking at an Xcode Cloud post in Stack Overflow that there is a CI/CD collective in the platform. ❤️
I have just joined it and am not too sure what being part of it yet means, but if you know more about it and how to make good use of it, make sure you reach out to me on Twitter or Mastodon. 😊