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Xcode 26.3 – Developers can leverage coding agents directly in Xcode

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Re: Xcode 26.3 – Developers can leverage coding agents directly in Xcode

#281

Post by the_other »

ndiddy wrote: post #80
embedding-shape wrote: post #60

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It's a damn shame, the hardware is pretty amazing and I wish they just had like one person who cared about Linux working at Apple and then make a small promise to not rugpull Linux users.

I think one thing that shows Apple's position towards open source in general is that they don't allow their employees to work on open source projects in their own time and using their own equipment. Before anyone brings up that California labor code provision, it has a carve-out for "activities that relate to the employer's business". Since Apple is big enough and has their fingers in enough pies that they can credib…

On the flip side, doesn't this mean that Apple is providing indirect funding (via employment) to any OSS project their employees contribute to during office hours?

Re: Xcode 26.3 – Developers can leverage coding agents directly in Xcode

#282

Post by willtemperley »

isodev wrote: post #280
mads_quist wrote: post #265

What else is there to say than that xCode is a f... nightmare. Android studio is not really better though. Native app development is an evil necessity.

From all the things to work on Xcode... fixing the ghost diagnostic errors, actual hot reload instead of the nightmare Previews are, tooling to help diagnose the now messy Swift 6 concurrency code, that thing where you can't open a project and one of it's dependent swift packages for editing simultaneously ... The list of actually useful things that can be added/changed in Xcode has more tokens than Claude is allowed…

> you can't open a project and one of it's dependent swift packages for editing simultaneously

You can. Any local packages are automatically editable in Xcode. Opening two projects referencing the same local package dependency isn't possible however.

Re: Xcode 26.3 – Developers can leverage coding agents directly in Xcode

#283

Post by AJRF »

(Context: I was an iOS dev for 10 years on well known, large iOS apps - I can't explain how much I dislike Xcode).

I recently started working for a startup, and they wanted an app.

What I shipped was a react native app (so I don't need to go in to Xcode to build), that renders a full screen web browser that points to our website. I've sprinkled in bits of injected JS to capture our cookies and local/session storage - which then gets saved to device storage and reinjected on app startup.

There are a few native-ish bits sprinkled in - onboarding, notifications, error screens, loading indicators, etc - but for the most part we don't need to worry about our API borking old versions (which is moving extraordinarily fast).

The only semi tricky bit was native auth integration - that needs treated with a bit more care, and stored securely, but it took a few days.

I ship the app to TestFlight and the AppStore using Fastlane from the command line, match handles the certs, and I never have to open Xcode.

It is honestly bliss, and i've heard a lot of app developers moving to this model (interestingly it normally follows a failed SDUX implementation)

Re: Xcode 26.3 – Developers can leverage coding agents directly in Xcode

#284

Post by rjzzleep »

mads_quist wrote: post #265

What else is there to say than that xCode is a f... nightmare. Android studio is not really better though. Native app development is an evil necessity.

When did xcode turn into this? It wasn't too bad early on IMHO

Re: Xcode 26.3 – Developers can leverage coding agents directly in Xcode

#285

Post by isodev »

willtemperley wrote: post #282
isodev wrote: post #280

Earlier quoted context omitted.

From all the things to work on Xcode... fixing the ghost diagnostic errors, actual hot reload instead of the nightmare Previews are, tooling to help diagnose the now messy Swift 6 concurrency code, that thing where you can't open a project and one of it's dependent swift packages for editing simultaneously ... The list of actually useful things that can be added/changed in Xcode has more tokens than Claude is allowed…

> you can't open a project and one of it's dependent swift packages for editing simultaneously You can. Any local packages are automatically editable in Xcode. Opening two projects referencing the same local package dependency isn't possible however.

Editor features for editable local packages are limited, even the project inspector hides some actions and then there is the whole story of schemas, working directory (maybe you want to tweak a binary or another target in that package) etc. It’s broken and frustrating.

Re: Xcode 26.3 – Developers can leverage coding agents directly in Xcode

#286

Post by solids »

AJRF wrote: post #283

(Context: I was an iOS dev for 10 years on well known, large iOS apps - I can't explain how much I dislike Xcode). I recently started working for a startup, and they wanted an app. What I shipped was a react native app (so I don't need to go in to Xcode to build), that renders a full screen web browser that points to our website. I've sprinkled in bits of injected JS to capture our cookies and local/session storage -…

Curious to hear if you had any trouble passing review.

Re: Xcode 26.3 – Developers can leverage coding agents directly in Xcode

#287

Post by NL807 »

mads_quist wrote: post #265

What else is there to say than that xCode is a f... nightmare. Android studio is not really better though. Native app development is an evil necessity.

>Native app development is an evil necessity.

I wish people did more native app development.

Re: Xcode 26.3 – Developers can leverage coding agents directly in Xcode

#288

Post by mohsen1 »

ukuina wrote: post #204
mohsen1 wrote: post #19

I built an entire iOS app without opening Xcode UI even once. Why so many iOS engineers prefer XCode?

What do you use instead? I thought Xcode sign-in is necessary for signing apps?

You can do the signing in Xcode Cloud. I'm sure with CLI it's possible too

Re: Xcode 26.3 – Developers can leverage coding agents directly in Xcode

#289

Post by zarzavat »

allthetime wrote: post #45
flohofwoe wrote: post #13

Building castles in the sky while the foundation is rotting away :/ Xcode really needs a couple of years of pure bugfix and optimization releases instead of hype-chasing.

Honest question. I've been using XCode for 10 years. For me, it's only improved and I don't have any real pain points. They are definitely fixing bugs. I make software for iOS, macOS, car play, and apple watch. Sure sometimes I've got to reset or clear a cache, but this has never stopped my day. What is so horrible about XCode?

Xcode is perpetually decade(s) behind the curve. VSCode is so much more advanced, even Atom 10 years ago was.

To put it in a language Apple understands, it's like forcing music producers to use GarageBand when everyone else is on Logic.

Re: Xcode 26.3 – Developers can leverage coding agents directly in Xcode

#290

Post by AJRF »

solids wrote: post #286
AJRF wrote: post #283

(Context: I was an iOS dev for 10 years on well known, large iOS apps - I can't explain how much I dislike Xcode). I recently started working for a startup, and they wanted an app. What I shipped was a react native app (so I don't need to go in to Xcode to build), that renders a full screen web browser that points to our website. I've sprinkled in bits of injected JS to capture our cookies and local/session storage -…

Curious to hear if you had any trouble passing review.

Zero so far - we've never had a single ding in 30+ submissions. Will update here if we do.
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