Question

I need to reference a project in a Xcode workspace by an environment variable. An Xcode workspace file might look like this:

<Workspace
   version = "1.0">
   <FileRef
      location = "group:../../Some/Dir/SomeLibrary.xcodeproj">
   </FileRef>
   <FileRef
      location = "group:SomeApp/SomeApp.xcodeproj">
   </FileRef>
</Workspace>

I want the SomeLibrary project to be referenced by an environment variable, so that the workspace file and projects can be used in different developer environments (the lib project is shared between several different projects). Any ideas on how to do this? Is the XML-format documented somewhere?

Thanks! 🙂

Answer 1

I think I need to answer this myself. Based on my research it is not possible to use a dynamic location (environment variable, source tree, etc) on workspace projects.

Solution 1:
You CAN achieve what I’m trying to do using symlinks. In my current workspace I’ve created one application-project, and a project entry which points to a symlink on the local file system. This way one can switch projects and have dynamic locations for the library-projects. I’m not sure if XCode treated this link properly when adding, so I manually added the project entry like this:

<FileRef
    location = "group:Libraries/SomeLibrary/SomeLibrary.xcodeproj">
</FileRef>

Where SomeLibrary (IMPORTANT: The folder SomeLibrary need to be the symlink, or else XCode wont be able to find the project contents) is a symlink to my static library project somewhere else on the local file system. This way, developers can have different paths to the library, and one can easily switch versions when needed.

Solution 2:
Adding a static library project as a subproject and using cross-reference. For sub-projects, one can use Source Tree and use dynamic locations.

I haven’t tested these solutions widely, so I’ll come back with a reply after using it for a while.