Build configurations and pre-release validation

Question & Answer
1

Hi guys, wondering if you can help going a bit insane here
Iā€™ve created a ā€˜Productionā€™ configuration in Xcode, set my ā€˜Xcode archiveā€™ step to use ā€˜$XCODE_CONFIGURATIONā€™ in configuration name and set this variable to ā€˜Productionā€™ in my release workflow. Iā€™ve just downloaded the version that was submitted to testflight using this workflow, but it appears to have ignored thisā€¦ so a couple of questions

  1. Is there a way to validate which configuration has been used in the logs? I canā€™t seem to find a reference to it being printed in the full logs for the build

  2. Is there a way I can validate that bitrise is building the correct configuration without actually submitting to the app store? Iā€™m using an ā€˜app-storeā€™ export option, so I donā€™t think Iā€™m able to download the archived IPA, right?

2

The configuration you provided can be checked at the start of the Xcode steps (if you use our Xcode Archive or Xcode Test step):

+------------------------------------------------------------------------------+
| (7) xcode-archive                                                            |
+------------------------------------------------------------------------------+
| id: xcode-archive                                                            |
| version: 2.0.5                                                               |
| collection: https://github.com/bitrise-io/bitrise-steplib.git                |
| toolkit: go                                                                  |
| time: 2017-03-03T01:40:31-08:00                                              |
+------------------------------------------------------------------------------+
|                                                                              |
e[34mINFOe[0m[01:40:31]  * e[32;1m[OK]e[0m Step dependency (xcode) installed, available. 
e[34mINFOe[0m[01:40:31]  * e[32;1m[OK]e[0m Step dependency (go) installed, available. 

e[34;1mipa export configs:e[0m
- ExportMethod: auto-detect
- UploadBitcode: yes
- CompileBitcode: yes
...
- CustomExportOptionsPlistContent:

e[34;1mxcodebuild configs:e[0m
- OutputTool: xcodebuild
- Workdir: /Users/vagrant/git
- ProjectPath: ./X/Y/Z.xcworkspace
- Scheme: X
- Configuration: 
- OutputDir: /Users/vagrant/deploy
- IsCleanBuild: no
- XcodebuildOptions: 
...

In the example above we did not force any configuration (- Configuration: ), which means that Xcode will select it based on the Scheme, just like when you click ā€œarchiveā€ in Xcode.app

After this, you can also see the xcodebuild command in the log which will be performed:

$ xcodebuild "-workspace" "./X/Y/Z.xcworkspace" "-scheme" "X" "archive" "-archivePath" "/var/folders/90/5stft2v13fb_m_gv3c8x9nwc0000gn/T/__archive__565585348/X.xcarchive"

Thatā€™s exactly what will run. Thereā€™s nothing special here or bitrise specific, your inputs are transformed to xcodebuild parameters and then the xcodebuild ... command is executed, thatā€™s all.

Xcode does print the configuration it will use in the log, you can see these lines:

=== BUILD TARGET Reachability OF PROJECT Pods WITH CONFIGURATION Release ===

which means that the Reachability project (pod) is built with the Release config.

If you use the xcpretty log formatter (default) these are tranformed into:

ā–ø Building ios-xcode-8.0/ios-xcode-8.0 [Release]

Which means the ios-xcode-8.0 project is building with the Release config.

Yes, from Xcodeā€™s log - see above.

The export option does not affect the configuration, it only affects the code signing. If you set it to ā€œapp-storeā€ that means it will be code signed with your app store signing files, that does not force any configuration.
Itā€™s the same in Xcode.app too, you can configure your project and have e.g. a Debug config build with App Store signing. Not usual, but Xcode wonā€™t stop you :wink:

If you have any questions, just let us know!