Building and shipping Mac and iOS apps without opening Xcode • Hacker News Board

Re: Building and shipping Mac and iOS apps without opening Xcode

#21

Post by saagarjha » Mon, Jul 13, 2026, 7:33 PM UTC

ryandrake wrote: post #11

recsv-heredoc wrote: post #7

Having to have Xcode installed is more than half the problem. It makes Visual Studio look lightweight.

Xcode does have (or had, haven't checked for a while) a lightweight "command line tools only" installer. Unfortunately, that installer omits a lot of the actual useful command line tools, like the notary and stapler tools. I also recall that the command line tool only installer leaves out things like the metal compiler, too. Not sure what the point of it is.

It lets you build basic UNIX-like tools.

Re: Building and shipping Mac and iOS apps without opening Xcode

#22

Post by zuzululu » Mon, Jul 13, 2026, 7:33 PM UTC

stephenhuey wrote: post #19

Thought this was going to be about the new Ruby Native! https://rubynative.com “From bundle install to your phone in minutes. To the App Store and Google Play without a line of native code.“

holy hell $299/app is wild

Re: Building and shipping Mac and iOS apps without opening Xcode

#23

Post by saagarjha » Mon, Jul 13, 2026, 7:36 PM UTC

Making your app buildable from the CLI is not something I do personally to use on my Mac but it is very useful when you're automating your CI. If you have GitHub Actions set up to build your app, so can Claude, assuming you have the right signing setup on your machine.

Re: Building and shipping Mac and iOS apps without opening Xcode

#24

Post by saagarjha » Mon, Jul 13, 2026, 7:37 PM UTC

hyperhello wrote: post #14

Being outside of the approved development loop has rough edges. How do you keep the app from putting up that permission to access documents folder all the time while you rebuild it?

They're a paid developer, so they are probably signing the app with a stable identity that avoids this.

Re: Building and shipping Mac and iOS apps without opening Xcode

#25

Post by kstenerud » Mon, Jul 13, 2026, 7:39 PM UTC

rvz wrote: post #16

By using "Claude Code"* * and giving Anthropic all your secrets, env vars, certificates and your source code to them.

Not if you've got a good sandbox.

Re: Building and shipping Mac and iOS apps without opening Xcode

#26

Post by saagarjha » Mon, Jul 13, 2026, 7:40 PM UTC

kstenerud wrote: post #25

rvz wrote: post #16

By using "Claude Code"* * and giving Anthropic all your secrets, env vars, certificates and your source code to them.

Not if you've got a good sandbox.

Do you have one?

Re: Building and shipping Mac and iOS apps without opening Xcode

#27

Post by vl » Mon, Jul 13, 2026, 7:47 PM UTC

mrbombastic wrote: post #6

This is cool but also makes me worried about the tendency with llms for all of us to make bespoke solutions rather than building a better community tool or extending an existing tool to solve the problem. fastlane exists to solve exactly this problem in the mobile space.

Bespoke solutions are better in many cases. They do exact things required for the project without taking extra dependency. Reducing dependencies is beneficial, because dependencies require management. So with llms economy of taking dependency shifted.

Re: Building and shipping Mac and iOS apps without opening Xcode

#28

Post by doug_durham » Mon, Jul 13, 2026, 7:51 PM UTC

mrbombastic wrote: post #6

This is cool but also makes me worried about the tendency with llms for all of us to make bespoke solutions rather than building a better community tool or extending an existing tool to solve the problem. fastlane exists to solve exactly this problem in the mobile space.

The llm is the better community tool. The important change is that you don't have to settle with someone developing a monolithic tool that happens to do what you need it to do. That was the way things used to need to be done because of the cost.

Re: Building and shipping Mac and iOS apps without opening Xcode

#29

Post by pupppet » Mon, Jul 13, 2026, 7:54 PM UTC

Doesn't that mean you need to distribute the app (TestFlight) before you can preview your app? How do you test locally without the simulators?

Re: Building and shipping Mac and iOS apps without opening Xcode

#30

Post by overgard » Mon, Jul 13, 2026, 7:54 PM UTC

Oh god, the app store does not need more slop. If you can't be bothered to open XCode (which I agree is a dumpster fire, but), you shouldn't be bothered to submit an app that a person has to review and another person has to filter out of their search results.