Question

I have a folder with my working xcode project in it. However when I go to copy and paste the entire folder to a different location and then go to open the .xcodeproj file inside, I get an error saying the project doesn’t exist!

Does anyone know why it’s doing this and how I can open the project?

Answer 1

I experienced the same problem with an iOS project I checked out from a repository. The .xcodeproj file is a package that contains several files. You can view the contents by right-clicking on your .xcodeproj file and selecting “Show Package Contents”. Inside the package, it’s my understanding that you’ll need several types of files to be present.

project.pbxproj contains all the references to files in your project, as well as many of the project settings. If your .xcodeproj package doesn’t contain this, you’re up a creek without a paddle.

When I first checked out my project, only this file was present and I was experiencing the same problem. I then copied and pasted two files, [login].pbxuser and [login].mode1v3, from the .xcodeproj file of another project. These files didn’t appear to contain any settings specific to this project, and it helped get my project up and running. I know I’m a little late to answer your question, but I found it while searching for an answer myself.