Archive for the ‘Xcode’ Category

Building a silly WatchKit App

WatchKit apps are easy to build and draining to debug. I don’t know what it is about extensions but they’re never fun to work with. The other day, daughter asked for an app to play some favorite sounds. I promised I’d write up a post about this, so here it is.

The entirety of the code took maybe a couple of minutes. This is one of the many places where using SwiftUI is a sheer delight. I did have to play with renderingMode to override the default B&W scheme for three of my buttons:

I decided to go with bundle-stored audio rather than deal with the complexities of adding audio assets to an xcassets item. Quick and easy. I limited the daughter to just 4 out of her long list of requested sounds to simplify my life. She returned with her list grudgingly prioritized.

Trimming and converting the audio to wav took seconds, thanks to command-line ffmpeg. Creating the art, too, was simple. I just used Preview to create all the required App Icons. Call it another 5 minutes to get that done. It was a great time to use Preview’s magic selection wand and its support for layers and transparency.

Where all the trouble lay was getting the watch app to consistent deploy to hardware for testing. Although this was a watch-only app, the phone still plays a big role. And I finally discovered that keeping my phone tethered to the computer when deploying to the watch made for a much smoother and more consistent experience. But the frustrations of failed deploys led to over an hour invested.

Here’s a quick summary of where my development time was spent.  Area corresponds to the level of effort:

The actual coding was nothing. Asset prep is always tedious but it’s O(n). It’s pretty clear from the start how much effort is needed, which varies by the number of assets used. You don’t add more complexity when you’re working with the right formats and tools.

The vast majority of headache is getting the Xcode tooling and the hardware to sync, install, and test. This really should be the easiest part, but it was endlessly frustrating. I don’t know if my tether-breakthrough is a universal solution or if my next project will be just as frustrating.

In the end, what should have been a half hour project stretched to several hours. I hope the next one will be way shorter.

“mint” (a simple SwiftPM installer) has improved my command line life

SwiftPM’s lack of an easy install feature has long been an issue of mine and for other people too. As the linked forums thread suggests, to accomplish this for a general audience requires some careful thinking: adding to /usr/local/bin is not always the best solution for every user.

Still, it’s a feature whose absence is notable. To fill the gap, I’ve discovered Yonas Kolb’s mint. Thank you to Leo Dion, who introduced this to me. It is ridiculously simple to use. Could it get easier than mint install erica/now? Admittedly my github id is short and so is my project name, but I think my point stands…

Yesterday, I hastily added a SwiftPM project to remind so it too could be installed via mint. Suddenly, adding the project specification is no longer an afterthought but a driving feature. It’s made SwiftPM support far more valuable to me for executables.

Make sure you name your primary file main.swift, your product to .executable, and if you’re developing in Xcode, override your path to point to the Xcode-project-style folder for the source files, usually the same name as the project itself. I mention this because Xcode by default (File > New > Swift Package) builds library projects, not executable ones. At the command-line use swift package init --type executable.

// swift-tools-version:5.2
// The swift-tools-version declares the minimum version of Swift required to build this package.

import PackageDescription

let package = Package(
    name: "remind",
    platforms: [
        .macOS(.v10_12)
    ],
    products: [
        .executable(
            name: "remind",
            targets: ["remind"]),
    ],
    dependencies: [
        .package(url: "https://github.com/apple/swift-argument-parser", from: "0.0.6"),
    ],
    targets: [
        .target(
            name: "remind",
            dependencies: [.product(name: "ArgumentParser", package: "swift-argument-parser")],
            path: "remind/"
        ),
    ],
    swiftLanguageVersions: [
        .v5
    ]
)

As for mint itself, you can build it or install it via HomeBrew: brew install mint.

If you have any suggestions on how I can improve my SwiftPM work, better integrate tagging, or any other tips, please let me know. Thanks!

Taking charge of those xips

Apple adopted the digitally-signed xip format for Xcode downloads a few years ago. It’s basically a signed version of zip archives. Most commonly, you download a xip and double-click. Archive Utility will open the file, verify its signature, and expand its contents.

In its default settings, Archive Utility always expands files to the same folder you download to. With Xcode, this is a big pain as moving the app with its thousands and thousands of tiny subfiles and embedded executables takes forever. Alternatively, moving the xip file from one location on your system to another can be painfully slow.

Fortunately, Archive Utility does allow you to specify where to unpack. Launch the Application using spotlight (or /System/Library/CoreServices/Applications/Archive Utility.app) and open preferences.

Although there’s no “Ask” option for “Save expanded files”, you can select where you want items to be stored using “into” from the pop-up:

Once set, you have to unset it for general use, because the location persists between launches. This is, needless to say, a big pain when you use archives for non-Xcode purposes on a regular basis:

Fortunately, you can unxip more effectively by using the command-line xip utility located in /usr/bin/xip without having to mess with Archive Utility or its preferences:

% xip
Usage: xip [options] --sign <identity> <input-file> [ <input-file> ... ] <output-xip-file>

Usage: xip --expand <input-file>

99.9% of everything you do with xip is that last “Usage” example. Still, as xip doesn’t offer a --help option, if you want to know what those interesting [options] are, you’ll need to read the man page (man xip). I prefer to open man pages in Preview instead of the command line, using this little trick:

man -t xip | open -f -a /System/Applications/Preview.app

Notice two things here:

  • First, the -t flag tells man to use the Groff typesetter (no relation) to format the page to postscript. This presents as a PDF in Preview. (Specifically, it uses /usr/bin/groff -Tps -mandoc -c if that kind of detail intrigues you.)
  • Second, the path for Preview has changed in Catalina to /System/Applications. If you want to do this on Mojave or earlier, adjust the path accordingly.

(Isn’t that a neat way to view man pages?)

While the man page suggests you can sign your own xip archives and provide your own identities, don’t bother. This format is exclusive to Apple, starting  from macOS Sierra. Only xip archives signed by Apple can be expanded in modern macOS releases. (See Tech note TN 2206 for details.)

Since --expand cannot be used with any other arguments, hop over to /Applications, and expand from there:

% cd /Applications/
% time xip --expand /Volumes/Kiku/xips/Xcode_11.2.1.xip 

Adding the time command at the start of the line lets you know how long it took to unxip, which is deeply satisfying to those of pedantic bent like myself. For those playing along, it was

xip: expanded items from "/Volumes/Kiku/xips/Xcode_11.2.1.xip"
1109.625u 275.408s 10:58.85 210.2%	0+0k 0+0io 167pf+0w

Update:

My enemy the Minimap

The minimap is one of Xcode 11’s starring features. I know many people were excited for it at its debut but after months of exposure, I now just disable it in the Adjust Editor Options menu (the five horizontal lines of unequal width indicating the contents of the primary editor) and grab back that room on my screen:

I’ve spent some time recently considering exactly why it is I hate the minimap so much. It’s not just that it takes up valuable horizontal space (although to be honest, it’s mostly that). If it did a better job to help me navigate or conceptualize my code, I wouldn’t resent that space. Rather, I get little out of it and it’s a blurred colorful distracting mess for me.

In theory, the minimap is a specialized scrollbar for code. It highlights where are you with respect to the file. You hover the cursor over it to view tooltip details. Upon finding a section,  you can quickly jump to it. Hold the command key down and all the tooltips appear at once for a quick and actionable  overview. All contextual bookmarks are larger sized so technically “legible” although I can barely read them with my bad eyes.

I don’t care where I am physically inside my file, so the scope highlights don’t offer much. I care where I am conceptually. My jump bar gives me the same overview as the minimap (using the command key) without stealing screen space or distracting me with extra pointless blurry information.

What I am at a loss to figure out is how the minimap does that better than my beloved jump bar or why people prefer having the big jumble on-screen. As far as I can figure, the overview (whether jump bar or minimap command key) provides the most powerful tool because it relies on recognition of the details you’re looking for. But most of the minimap is designed around recall: where you are in the file, what the shape of your code is like, etc, which is a far weaker place for cognitive support.

So what am I missing? Why should I love the minimap? Please help me figure out what I am not understanding here and help me turn the minimap from an enemy to a friend.

Xcode: Basics of the four-block wonder

The official name is “Navigate to Related Items” but to me, it’s the four block wonder, a menu button that sits at the top left of the Xcode editor. With this menu, you can hop between file counterparts (for example, .m/.h, or .swift/generated interface, which is what a lot of people use it for). But there’s so much more.

Set the cursor on a type, and you can view or navigate its superclass, subclasses, or siblings, as well as the protocols, extensions, and categories it connects to. A single click navigates you to the interface or implementation in question:

Use the cursor to establish the context for the menu, otherwise you’ll only see a smaller subset menu options, such as recent files. The callers option shows you your clients, and callees the items your code is calling — all specific to the current cursor context.

One of my favorite tools in the four-block menu is Generated Interfaces, which allows you to view an item’s Swift interface or see how it translates to Objective-C. For example, if you use an obvious preposition label, the ObjC generated interface subsumes it into its selector:

With this, you don’t have to wonder if your selector is specified right and you don’t have to override the selector with objc. You just look up the definition and you’re good to call.

In addition to contextual helpers, the four-block lets you select recently viewed files and, when using version control, recent files that have been locally modified and not yet committed (basically the ones showing the “M”-for-modified).

The four little squares may be tiny but it is a powerful tool in your Xcode arsenal.

Update: Lilly reminds me that you can bind the related items menu. I have mine bound to ^1 but I don’t remember if that’s something I did or something that is default. If you want to add or change, visit Preferences > Key Bindings and search for “related”.

Fun with Xcode Search Domains: Excluding match text

Most Xcode users quickly become familiar with the basics of the Find Navigator panel.

With it, you can find text, regular expressions, and perform search-and-replace, whether matching or ignoring case. But that’s just scratching the surface of the Find Navigator.

I thought I’d drop a few words today about search scopes. Controlled from the bottom left,  under the search field, you can create narrowed searches. This enables you to, for example, search only in Swift files or exclude files containing the word Test.

To get started, click the icon (two lines with three squares on a line between them) and then New Scope (the plus icon). Here, you can name the scope, limit the search extent, and add criteria for exactly which files should be included or not.

The logic is straightforward. You choose where to look (the project, a folder, or through the entire SDK), and whether to include all conditions or some conditions:

Each condition is based on the file name, path, extension, UTI (the kind of file, like image which is useful for finding vector assets), Workspace location (namely groups), or source control status (handy for finding newly applied changes.)

Most of my conditions are file-name-based. And for those, you get the following matching conditions. The “ends with” is an obvious win for extensions (although you can also use UTIs for that), and “starts with” can help for projects organized in hierarchical ways.

Now, interestingly enough, this list fails to offer “does not contain” but that’s fairly easy to work around. Since Xcode supports regex matching, you can easily replicate “does not contain” with an appropriate regex:

Change the file name to a path to exclude source file directories.

You can create as many search domains as you like. At least, I haven’t found an upper bound yet. I haven’t found a way to reorder the find scopes, although if you’re really controlling about this, you can pop into  your workspace (ProjectName.xcodeproj/project.xcworkspace/xcuserdata/username.xcuserdatad), convert your UserInterfaceState.xcuserstate to xml (plutil -convert xml1), and hand-edit it the way you need.

There are lots of wonderful little Xcode tweaks like these throughout this monster of an IDE. What are some of your faves? If I have time this week, I’ll share some of mine, such as the four-square — another of my favorite tools — and a few great ways to connect your editor to the navigator.

How I got Rust working in Xcode

A while ago, I posted about how I set up Xcode to work with Python. Yesterday, I was taking a class on Rust and decided to use my friendly neighborhood (sp)IDE(rman) coding environment, namely Xcode.

I’m not going to say it was a stunning success but there was enough interest that I thought I’d share the steps so you too could embrace Rust through Xcode.

Install Rust. You start, as one does, by installing Rust. Hop over to https://www.rust-lang.org/tools/install to grab a copy of the tools. They install to ~/.cargo, for whatever reason. I put a link in to / usr/local/bin.

Create a Project. Create an external build system Xcode project by choosing File > New > Project > Cross-platform > External Build System > Next. Enter a product name (I called mine “Rust” because that’s exactly how creative I am.) and set your build tool (in my case, /usr/local/bin/rustc because of the link). Save it somewhere convenient.

Create a source file. Apparently “rs” (rust source?) is the proper extension. I went with “test” as my name. File > New > Empty > test.rs

fn main() {
    println!("hello world");
}

Don’t forget to add some code.

Compile. Edit your scheme.  Choose Run > Info > Build Executable > Other and select your compiler. Adding it to /usr/local/bin made it easier to select rustc for me. Then uncheck Debug executable because you’re not debugging the Rust compiler.

At this point you can click Run and you’ll see the standard option message because you haven’t specified what it should run.

Back in the scheme editor select Run > Arguments and add the source file and output file. Unfortunately, I could not get this to work with SRCROOT at all, so here it is in all its glory with complete paths.

The Pre-action removes any build product from a previous run:

So here we are. With luck, it compiles. If not, the errors appear in pretty horrible form in the Xcode console, where curses is what we do, not how the console interprets pretty text output.

You can get slightly less horrible feedback by adding the launch argument: –error-format=json

Yeah, it’s wordy but it’s slightly less awful.

Pick a path. Unlike python, rust is just a compiler. If you build, and then add a step execute, the execution output (unlike compiler errors) will not normally print at the Xcode console. The challenge is to get that information in some form where you can access it.

At first I went with a little post-action osascript and threw up the output in a separate window:

But I really wanted to make it work with the console So back I went to Applescripting. Instead of rustc, I changed my build tool to osascript:

I added this instead to my run scheme arguments.

Yep, I’m using osascript to run a shell script that just compiles with rust and then runs it, passing the output through back to Xcode.

I know this is bad. I know I should be ashamed. I hang my head.

But you know what? It works. Stray osascript-crud and all:

I’m not sure how much this makes me a programming outcast but it was kind of fun to figure out how far I could push my beloved enemy Xcode.

SwiftUI: Modified Content, Type Erasure, and Type Debugging

When working with declarative views, you should be able to reach for a full tool suite of functional application. In a typesafe language like Swift, things can prove more difficult than you’d might first think. Consider the following code:

What is core‘s type? It isn’t Text. It’s actually an application of modified content, specifically Text passed through a rotation effect:

Just add a background color and a shadow and the type jumps to this:

You might ask: why is this a problem? After all, Swift is doing all the heavy lifting, right? In my case, the answer lies in my struggle to incorporate this core image into a multi-stage bit of text art using reduce. Paul Hudson tweeted a step-by-step approach to this and I was sure I could make it simpler and more elegant.

And that’s where I started throwing myself against what at first seemed like an impenetrable wall for a couple of hours. Between SwiftUI’s stroke-style Dysarthria error messages and the typesafe system, my attempt at creating a solution along these lines felt doomed:

[Color.red, .orange, .yellow, .green, .blue, .purple].reduce(core) { view, color in
  view.padding()
    .background(color)
    .rotationEffect(theta)
}

The code wouldn’t compile and the error messages couldn’t tell me why. The problem? Each stage created a new layer of modified content, changing the type and rendering reduce  unable to do the work. It was only with the help of some deep-dives into the docs and advice from colleagues that I was able to arrive at a solution.

Type erasure, using SwiftUI’s AnyView struct enables you to change the type of a given view, destroying the nested hierarchy. Importantly, it creates a single type, allowing a reduce operation to proceed.

At first, I used AnyView the way you’d typecast in Swift, namely:

AnyView(view.padding()
  .background(color)
  .rotationEffect(theta))

But I hated that. It sticks out as so Un-SwiftUI-y, with the parentheses spanning multiple lines and throwing off the clear logical flow. If you’re going to go fluent, just go fluent. So, eventually, I decided to create a View type extension to handle this:

extension View {
  /// Returns a type-erased version of the view.
  public var typeErased: AnyView { AnyView(self) }
}

The result looks, instead, like this:

view.padding()
  .background(color)
  .rotationEffect(Angle(radians: .pi / 6))
  .typeErased

And yes, I went with a property and not a function as I felt this was expressing a core characteristic inherent to each View. I can probably argue it the other way as well.

From there, it wasn’t much of a leap to ask “what other fluent interface tricks can I apply”, and I ended up putting together this little View extensions for inline peeks:

extension View {
    /// Passes-through the view with debugging output
  public func passthrough() -> Self {
    print("\(Self.self): \(self)")
    return self
  }
}

This prints out an instance’s type and a rendering of the instance, which will vary depending on whether there’s a custom representation, passing the actual instance through to whatever the next stage of chaining is. I don’t use it much but when I do, it’s been pretty handy at taking a peek where Xcode’s normal QuickLook features hit the edge.

In any case, I thought I’d share these in case they’re of use to anyone else. Drop me a note or a tweet or a comment if they help. Cheers!

Update: It suddenly occurred to me that I could make this a lot more general:

extension View {
  /// Passes-through the view with customizable side effects
  public func passthrough(applying closure: (_ instance: Self) -> ()) -> Self {
    closure(self)
    return self
  }
}

Isn’t that nicer? The equivalent is now:

struct MyView: View {
  var body: some View {
    [Color.red, .orange, .yellow, .green, .blue, .purple]
      .reduce(Text("👭")
        .font(.largeTitle)
        .rotationEffect(Angle(radians: .pi))
        .typeErased)
      { view, color in
        view.padding()
          .background(color)
          .rotationEffect(Angle(radians: .pi / 6))
          .passthrough { print("\(type(of: $0)), \($0)") }
          .typeErased
    }
  }
}

And I can put any behavior in from printouts to timing to any other side effect I desire. To all the functional purists out there, I sincerely apologize. 🙂

SwiftUI: Modal presentation

I have regrettably little time to devote to SwiftUI. I explore when I can, although I wish I were a lot further in that journey.

Here’s my latest go, where I’m looking to build a modal presentation. Today is the first time I’ve been able to play with Modal, the storage type for a modal presentation. I tied it together with an isPresented state, but I’m wondering if I’ve done this all wrong.

I can’t help but think there’s a better way to do this. I’m using a text button for “Done” instead of a system-supplied item, so it won’t be automatically internationalized. Nor, can I find any specialty “Done” item in SFSymbols. When looking at Apple’s samples, such as Working with UI Controls, I see the same Text("Done") . While I know that Text elements are automatically localized should resources be available, is SwiftUI providing us with any core dictionary of terms?

I think using the isPresented state in the code below may be too clunky. I’d think that there would be a more direct way to coordinate a modal item. Any advice and guidance will be greatly welcomed.

I remain stuck in Mojave for most of my work, although I put an install of Catalina on a laptop. Although you can build proper SwiftUI apps using the beta Xcode, without the preview (and I’ve had no luck finding a secret default to enable it under Mojave) makes the experience way slower than working in a playground.

I’m hoping to dive next into Interfacing with UIKit.