Question

I’m running automated application unit tests under a C.I. environment for iPhone apps and everything works fine using a command line such as;

xcodebuild -scheme "Tests" -configuration Debug -sdk iphonesimulator5.0

That’s great, but I now want to force the iPhone simulator to launch in Retina mode, rather than the default standard mode.

I know I can toggle this with the hardware menu option, however I’m running this on a headless integration server so don’t have that option.

What I’d like to do is pass a switch somehow on the command line that tells the simulator to launch in Retina mode.

I optimistically tried appending SimulateDevice=”iPhone (Retina)” to the xcodebuild command, but that seems not to work.

Is this possible? I can’t seem to find a way at the moment.

If it’s not possible, is there an alternative approach I can take?

Answer 1

You should use AppleScript to change the value of SimulateDevice in com.apple.iphonesimulator.plist.

Here is an example that does that after prompting the user to choose the desired device type. You can modify it to read the value from the command line or use "iPhone (Retina)" as a default value.

The following script changes the simulator device into a value from the command line:

on run argv

set selectedDevice to item 1 of argv as string

set thePListFolderPath to path to preferences folder from user domain as string
set thePListPath to thePListFolderPath & "com.apple.iphonesimulator.plist"
tell application "System Events"
    tell property list file thePListPath
        tell contents
            set value of property list item "SimulateDevice" to selectedDevice
        end tell
    end tell
end tell

end run

And you can execute it from the terminal using the command osascript:

osascript myScript.scpt "iPhone (Retina)"

Or

osascript myScript.scpt "iPhone"

Edit

You can modify that script to make it launch the Retina simulator by default:

set selectedDevice to "iPhone (Retina)"

set thePListFolderPath to path to preferences folder from user domain as string
set thePListPath to thePListFolderPath & "com.apple.iphonesimulator.plist"
tell application "System Events"
    tell property list file thePListPath
        tell contents
            set value of property list item "SimulateDevice" to selectedDevice
        end tell
    end tell
end tell

Finally note that changes to "SimulateDevice" take effect only when a new simulator is launched.