Question

I’m curious to know what are considered as best practice when upgrading Xcode. Say upgrading from Xcode 4.1 (iOS4 SDK) to Xcode 4.2 (iOS5 SDK).

Should the previous Xcode version be uninstalled with devtools-uninstall script or should I just install it over the old Xcode and let Apple handle the upgrade.

What about projects that I have created in Xcode 4.1. Will all the different settings and configurations for those projects automagically be adjust for Xcode 4.2?

These are some basic questions that I have about the upgrade process. If you have any hints & tips to make the upgrade easier please let us know in this thread.

Answer 1

This is what I personally do for each upgrade:

1. Backup the working /Developer directory

   [ 13:45 jon@MacBookPro ~/xCode/Projects ]$ sudo mv -v /Developer /Developer-4.1
   

2. Run the new Xcode installer using the default install location (/Developer)

This is how it looks on my machine (sometimes I just symlink /Developer latest version after installing it to /Developer-v#):

[ 13:45 jon@MacBookPro ~/xCode/Projects ]$ ll /
drwxrwxr-x+ 49 root  admin   1.6K Oct 30 19:08 Applications
drwxrwxr-x  15 root  admin   510B Oct 18 12:51 Developer
drwxrwxr-x@ 17 root  admin   578B Sep 20 13:12 Developer-3.2.4
drwxr-xr-x@ 10 root  admin   340B Sep 20 13:54 Developer-3.2.5
drwxrwxr-x  15 root  admin   510B Oct 17 12:35 Developer-4.1
drwxrwxr-x@ 16 root  admin   544B Oct 17 13:10 Developer-4.2
drwxrwxr-x@ 18 root  admin   612B Sep 20 13:44 Developer-4.2-beta7
drwxr-xr-x+ 64 root  wheel   2.1K Oct 30 19:08 Library

Your projects are not stored (hopefully) in /Developer, so any install/uninstall will not touch your current project files.