Xcode on The Dangling Pointer

Another day, another set of iTunes Connect errors

Fri, 04 Nov 2016 13:20:24 +0000

Swizzling in AFNetworking somehow breaks iOS' NSDoubleLocalizedStrings

Fri, 22 Jan 2016 14:09:31 +0000

Tools to Help Test Localization

Apple provides some pretty slick tools to help with localization testing in your apps. I had completely forgotten about two launch parameters that make it possible to find those pesky layout problems early:

NSDoubleLocalizedStrings - Any calls made to NSLocalizedString will double the strings to simulate languages with longer words, like German.
NSShowNonLocalizedStrings - Replaces any text from NSLocalizedString that doesn't have an entry in a strings file.
AppleTextDirection - Simulates a Left to Right language.

In Xcode 7 there is an easier way to provide these options. Edit the scheme for your app, click on the Run section, then the Options tab. You'll see Application Language has two options - Double Length Pseudolanguage and Right to Left Pseudolanguage. There is also a check box for Show non-localized strings. These three options are equivalent to the launch arguments above.

Duplicated Simulators in Xcode - Quick Fix

Wed, 30 Dec 2015 18:10:18 +0000

Here's a quick script that deletes and recreated all of your iOS simulators in Xcode 7. Use it when you get the duplicated nightmare or if you just want to reset everything:

https://gist.github.com/cabeca/3ff77007204e5479f7af

UIKit Dynamics - Turning on Debug Mode

Thu, 16 Jul 2015 15:08:18 +0000

In iOS 9 Apple has introduced a number of new shiny things for UIKit Dynamics. One of them is UIFieldBehavior which describes magnetic, electrical and spring fields of influence. Fields are hard to debug (even in real life!) so Apple decided to provide a debug mode on UIDynamicAnimator. The trick is the debug mode isn't published in the headers. Why? Who knows. They mentioned it quite plainly at WWDC 2015 and said you have to turn it on in the LLDB debugger.

Mac OS X Server Time Machine Volume Filling Too Fast

Thu, 21 Aug 2014 12:56:34 +0000

I've been noticing on my Mac OS X Mavericks 10.8 Server I have running in a data center has been filling up its Time Machine volume way too quickly. The backups are continually huge and only about a week fits on the second hard drive inside of the Mac mini. Every time the machine backed up it was taking up so much room that previous backups had to be deleted.

Asynchronous unit testing Core Data with Xcode 6

Wed, 06 Aug 2014 19:52:11 +0000

The WordPress for iOS project had a number of unit tests using Core Data and a custom asynchronous test helper. The helper used a semaphore in a global scope and a bit of method swizzling to give a wait/notify mechanism. The problem with this solution was the global semaphore and poorly written tests causing a conflict. Tests would call the ending wait and previous tests running Core Data would fire off notifies causing a mismatch between the original test and the recipient of the message to pass by the current semaphore.

If you run Unit Tests in Xcode

Thu, 24 Apr 2014 21:31:18 +0000

If you run unit tests inside of Xcode, you may wish to turn on the behavior to show the test results after they run.

Go to Preferences in Xcode.
Click on the Behaviors tab.
Click on Succeeds.
Check the box shown and select "Show" then "Test Navigator".
Repeat step 4 for Fails as well.

Now when your tests finish (failed or succeeded) you'll see the pretty green or red marks.

Software I Use Every Day

Fri, 04 Apr 2014 19:07:25 +0000

In the spirit of yesterday's post, I'm going to list out what I use every day in terms of software. This isn't exhaustive but it's pretty darn close.

General Utilities

1Password - Probably the best password manager out there combined with mobile apps
Cloudup - quick way to share images, videos, text (ask me for a referral code)
Coffitivity - coffeehouse sounds to help boost productivity
Cyberduck - SFTP client
DaisyDisk - finding where all my space has gone
Dropbox
Evernote - where I keep my larger notes, graphics, PDF files
Parallels Desktop - for the occasional booting of old Mac OS & Windows VMs
Radium - menu bar radio streaming
Rdio - monthly subscription-based song streaming
RescueTime - track my app usage to determine if I'm distracted
Simplenote - for my quick note taking needs
Skype - sadly yes
Slack - communication for our team - web socket-based system like HipChat but better

Graphics

Adobe Photoshop CC - go-to app for image editing
Aperture (more for personal use)
Balsamiq Mockups - easy mockups
Bartender - organize your menu bar extras area
Camtasia 2 - screen casts
Color Picker
Join.me - easy screen sharing - I use it more for helping people fix computer problems remotely
Pixelmator
SnagIt

Development - General

Base - for digging around SQLite files; especially handy debugging Core Data
Charles - proxying application for testing remote calls
HockeyApp - binary distribution for testing
Kaleidoscope - arguably the most beautiful diff tool - ignore whitespace is still not a feature :(
PHPStorm - for when I have to get into WordPress and WordPress.com API coding
TextMate - Still my favorite text editor
Textual - Mac IRC client

Development - iOS

AppCode - alternative IDE for Objective-C - I switch between Xcode and here for specific reasons (future post?)
iExplorer - could not live without the ability to dig around device filesystems
PaintCode - easiest way to get Core Graphics code from images or hand-drawn UI elements
Reflector - transmit your iOS device screen to your computer for recording
Spark Inspector - interactively debug your UIView layers & NSNotificationCenter calls
Xcode
xScope - helpful UI tools for your Mac

Development - Android

Android Studio
Genymotion - Android VM manager - lurv

Xcode Presentation Mode

Thu, 03 Apr 2014 01:59:27 +0000

Giving a presentation with Xcode on screen? Don't forget about Presentation mode in Fonts & Colors!

It doesn't help with the text size in the navigator but at least everyone will see your code nice and clear!

Checking in CocoaPods files

Tue, 01 Apr 2014 19:53:25 +0000

I've gone back and forth on the debate with whether or not we should be checking in the dependencies for a project supplied by CocoaPods. In the past I felt it was best to only check in the Podfile and maybe the lock file. I believe I've finally made a decision with recent experiences and my development practices with Git.

I'm checking in the whole effing workspace.

Why?

Every branch, especially master, should be compilable and archivable up to a point.
- Caveat 1: Xcode is a piece of shit sometimes and will break things because it can between versions.
- Caveat 2: Provisioning Profiles.
CocoaPods is a well-maintained tool, however, Specs are a crap-shoot.
- Specs can disappear.
- Specs can be unofficially maintained.
- Specs can be wrong.
Checking in your Pods directory ensures the best possible snapshot of the pre-binary code.
- Forcing a pod install every time someone checks out code doesn't ensure the same state of code is maintained for testing bugs in previous versions.
- You may decide to drop Pods support and forget how to use it.
- Wouldn't it be nice to do diffs on your dependency classes?
Xcode Bots doesn't work well enough yet with CocoaPods for me to want to install Pods every build
- I'm also not sold on Xcode Bots itself - it's quite unreliable and likes to smoke my server's CPU.
- CocoaPods needs to not be a hinderance - its pretty innocuous when the risky work (installing Pods) is done and checked in.

That sums up my thoughts. I primarily work on WordPress for iOS which is a heavily forked and contributed to repository. I don't think the project could be a success with the amount of branching and pull requests performed if we didn't check in the Pods directory.

Fixing Layer Transparency Issues in Xcode

Mon, 30 Jan 2012 15:23:18 +0000

If you're looking to get higher frame rates and general application performance tweaks from your iOS application, you may need to take a look at transparent settings on your subviews. Any time you set a subview to be transparent, the OS has to blend multiple layers together to figure out the end flattened result. This blending takes CPU cycles and can impact performance of your app - especially in something as simple as a UITableViewCell.

iTunes Connect - Invalid Binary

Thu, 26 May 2011 13:11:51 +0000

I spent the past week pulling out my hair trying to submit an update for Centare's EyeOnWeather application to iTunes Connect. I kept getting a reject from the system and all I got for an error message was "Invalid Binary." THANKS, THAT'S SOOPER.

Eventually I ended up attempting to contact iTunes Connect Support for further details. I thought it might have been missing icons, malformed Info.plist, something. I haven't changed anything in the project drastically with how it builds, so I was at a loss. Turns out, I was picking the wrong provisioning profile in my setup. Man I felt stupid. Ends up that I'm not crazy - Apple's documentation on how to set up your project for building still only references Xcode 3. Awesome for the rest of the world using Xcode 4. Here are some tips I got from Apple iTunes Connect support for pulling in information to submit to their developer team:

Xcode WTF are you doing?!

Mon, 16 Nov 2009 14:36:02 +0000

I didn't start developing in Xcode "for real" until this year but I've played around with Xcode for a number of years. Over that time, I've screwed around with settings and changed defaults. It got to the point where following screen shot examples weren't matching up, #pramga marks in my code weren't showing up correctly in the code editor method drop down list and on and on. Perusing through Xcode Workspace Guide, I found this handy little suggestion from Apple:
To reset Xcode to its factory settings for the logged-in user, run these commands in Terminal:

Xcode 3.2.1

Fri, 09 Oct 2009 01:41:59 +0000

Xcode 3.2.1 was released today and is available for download with iPhone SDK 3.1.2. This release is mainly a bug fix release and I've confirmed it does fix the Unit Testing issue I reported earlier.

Xcode & Snow Leopard - Logical unit tests hanging

Sat, 19 Sep 2009 01:41:17 +0000

I haven't written unit tests before in Xcode. I started to read Apple's article on unit testing with iPhone development because I wanted to follow sound development principles with an agile approach. Not long into the guide, I got stuck. Literally. Using Xcode 3.2 on Snow Leopard caused Xcode to lock/hang during the build of the logical unit test. Same results after iPhone SDK 3.1 came out. I couldn't find anything online either except a few people experiencing the same issue. In the system console (not Xcode console) I was seeing:

Xcode SCM & build directory

Mon, 03 Aug 2009 22:23:25 +0000

Xcode has a build directory inside of your project, which you shouldn't be including in your source code management repository. Simply said, those files change so much and are "discardable". There is no way to easily exclude this directory from your repository. The accepted way to fix this (after some digging) is to simply move the build directory for Xcode to a temporary folder.

To move the build directory, click on the Xcode menu in your menu bar, and click on Preferences. Change the folder under "Building" to a temporary folder. I created a tmp directory in my user folder.