xcrun, the version manager for the Xcode toolchain
I’d been aware of xcrun existence for a while, and so it used in tools like shenzen, but it wasn’t till I saw this PR on specta that I understood the true power of this tool.
xcrun provides a means to locate or invoke developer tools from the command-line, without requiring users to modify Makefiles or otherwise take inconvenient measures to support multiple Xcode tool chains.
The tool xcode-select(1) is used to set a system default for the active developer directory, and may be overridden by the DEVELOPER_DIR environment variable (see ENVIRONMENT).
This means that people maintaing a library’s compatibility with older versions of Xcode, or developing against a beta, can easily run their tests by using the DEVELOPER_DIR and SDKROOT environment variables like in the example from the mentioned PR:
$ DEVELOPER_DIR=/Xcode/5.1.1/Xcode.app rake test
$ DEVELOPER_DIR=/Xcode/6.1.1/Xcode.app rake test
$ DEVELOPER_DIR=/Xcode/6.2/Xcode-Beta.app rake test
$ DEVELOPER_DIR=/Xcode/6.3/Xcode-Beta.app rake test
Pretty handy hey!
I’ve made a mental note to update all my build tools to use xcrun o
I’m gonna update the build tools in my projects to use xcodebuild through xcrun, and always use it from now on.
Food for thought
- What other things can be done with
xcrun? - Is there a way to show all the avilable sdks and valid
DEVELOPER_DIRlocations?