Xcode Archive significantly slower on Xcode 9.0.x stack (compared to Xcode 8.3.x stack)

Question & Answer Builds
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1

Same build config:

  • on Xcode 8.3.x stack Xcode Archive took 39 secs
  • on Xcode 9.0.x stack Xcode Archive took 188 secs
2

Solution: turn off the Compile Bitcode option in Xcode Archive step

    - xcode-archive:
        inputs:
        - upload_bitcode: 'no'
        - compile_bitcode: 'no'

With this the Xcode Archive step took 48 seconds on Xcode 9.0.x in the quick test build.

Explanation: Xcode 9 changed the default configs regarding Bitcode in archive for Development / Ad-Hoc archives.

Xcode 8.3 did not use the Bitcode option during export if the export type is development / ad-hoc, but Xcode 9 does, so if you want to make the archive faster and you don’t need Bitcode you should disable that in the Xcode Archive step.

This only applies for non App Store archives, for app-store type archives Xcode 8.3 did enable Bitcode as well by default, so there should be no (significant) difference on the two stacks.

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