Git has become a very popular version control system in iOS and Mac development. Git comes with a set of command line tools to check status, commit changes, view logs, make and merge branches, and coordinate commits with a remote repository.  There are a number of desktop apps that can perform these functions, including Xcode.  When I ask other iOS and Mac developers how they interact with Git, most say they use the command line or a separate desktop app like Tower.  I find very few developers use Xcode for even some basic Git tasks, and many developers are not aware of the Git support Xcode offers.

For my own workflow, I like to minimize the number of tools used and number of switches between apps needed to complete a task.  So, I decided to attempt to use Xcode exclusively to interact with Git and share my results.  So far I have been pleasantly surprised at what all Xcode can do with Git. If you have not taken a look at Xcode’s support for Git, you may be surprised how much you can accomplish.

This article assumes basic familiarity with Xcode and Git, and describes Git functionality present in Xcode version 4.6.2. (more…)

A couple of years ago I posted my scripts for tagging and building. The build script doesn’t work so well for the App Stores and the Build and Archive-based submission process, so here’s an updated approach that works inside Xcode. (Same as my last article, I’m still using git, the tag.sh script, and Apple Generic Versioning (agv).)

1. In your Xcode project, create a Shell Script target called GenGitVersion.
2. Insert the following script in GenGitVersion’s Run Script phase, replacing the path to your git executable if need be:

   git=/usr/local/git/bin/git
   version=`$git describe`
   echo "#define GIT_VERSION $version" > InfoPlist.h
   touch Info.plist

3. Make GenGitVersion a dependency of your main target.
4. Add “InfoPlist.h” to your .gitignore file.
5. In your main target’s build settings:
1. Turn on Preprocess Info.plist File
2. Set Info.plist Preprocessor Prefix File to InfoPlist.h
6. In your app’s Info.plist set the Bundle versions string, short to GIT_VERSION

Now each time you build the main target, the version will be populated in the build’s Info.plist.

Examples

• If you tag a commit, the version returned by git describe is the tag name.
If the current commit isn’t tagged, you’ll get the most recent tag plus the number of additional commits and an abbreviated commit name. Here’s a 1.0b1 tag with 2 additional commits: 1.0b1-2-g3925f3b. This can be a good way to identify a private developer build.
• You can optionally add --dirty to git describe and the version will have -dirty appended if there are uncommitted changes to your working tree.
• git describe will fail if there are no tags in the current working tree.

For those not aware, when you compile an Objective-C application, whether it be for the desktop or for Cocoa Touch devices, the debugging symbols are stripped out of the binaries. Therefore, unlike other languages such as Java, when a crash occurs, there is virtually no way to determine where the crash occurred. However, when the applications are compiled, a dSYM bundle is generated. This bundle allows us to match up the debugging symbols with the application’s crash log to help determine the cause of the crash.

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It’s common practice for any software project with multiple coders to use some version control mechanism. CVS or Subversion used to be popular. These days distributed systems like git and Mercurial are the quickly replacing the old standards. But what about the cases when you’re the only coder?
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It is important to develop a consistent build process for your applications. I have written a couple of bash scripts to help me with this process.

I use git for version control and also the services of github. Now in another post on this site Marcus covered how to put git commit checksums in your Info.plist’s CFBundleVersion. I have opted to use Apple Generic Versioning (or agv for short) instead as it has an easy to read incrementing build number and is super easy to script. It’s also great for use with Sparkle since Sparkle uses the CFBundleVersion to see if the appcast has a newer version.
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I’m a believer. I’ve used version control before, but Marcus has convinced me that with a little known version control system called Git, written by Linus Torvalds (the creator of Linux), version control is not just about versioning, it’s about expressing yourself with your code and collaborating with others, seamlessly.

As memory serves the only time I’ve used version control in a meaningful way the system I was using was Visual SourceSafe from Microsoft. I know. Blech! It’s awful! I’ve pulled code from many a CVS or Subversion repository, but I’ve never really used them in the way they are intended to be used. Now, thanks to Marcus, I realize that version control isn’t just about versioning any more. It’s a whole methodology/ideology that makes better programmers. Here is what I mean.
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Git has been gaining in popularity with Cocoa developers as well as open source developers. As I work it into my development workflow, one item that was missing was the automatic injection of the build number into the application bundle.

There are a few scripts floating around that perform this trick for subversion, but git handles build numbers a bit differently and it appears that no one has bothered to publish one. As is known, subversion uses an incrementing integer for build numbers. This makes it very easy to determine which build number came first and makes it very useful for a non-public version number. Git, however, uses a hash for each build number which is not incrementing and therefore not very useful for determining version numbers. However, it is still very useful for pulling up a specific build when a crash report is received, etc.

Therefore, with the help of Matt Long’s perl-fu, I have updated Daniel Jalkut’s subversion perl script to work with git. Since the build numbers are not sequential, I would not recommend using them for Sparkle. Therefore, in my own build process for iWeb Buddy, I hand select the version number (for example 1.0.4) and then use the short hash from git as the CFBundleVersion number. Normally this number is displayed in parens after the primary build number but, at least in iWeb Buddy, I have removed it from the display entirely. Since it is no longer a sequential number it would only potentially confuse users and it displays in the crash reports anyway.

The updated script is as follows:

# Xcode auto-versioning script for Subversion by Axel Andersson
# Updated for git by Marcus S. Zarra and Matt Long

use strict;

# Get the current git commit hash and use it to set the CFBundleVersion value
my $REV = `/opt/local/bin/git show --abbrev-commit | grep "^commit"`;
my $INFO = "$ENV{BUILT_PRODUCTS_DIR}/$ENV{WRAPPER_NAME}/Contents/Info.plist";
    
my $version = $REV;
if( $version =~ /^commit\s+([^.]+)\.\.\.$/ )
{ 
	$version = $1;
}
else
{
	$version = undef;
}
die "$0: No Git revision found" unless $version;
    
open(FH, "$INFO") or die "$0: $INFO: $!";
my $info = join("", );
close(FH);
    
$info =~ s/([\t ]+CFBundleVersion<\/key>\n[\t ]+).*?(<\/string>)/$1$version$2/;
    
open(FH, ">$INFO") or die "$0: $INFO: $!";
print FH $info;
close(FH);

Since git is distributed, there is no need to be online to produce a build. The script will grab the current abbrev-commit hash and will inject it into the current build’s Info.plist file.

Last year, I made the switch from subversion to Git. After 9+ months of using Git, I can comfortably say that it was a very good choice. While branching is easy in subversion, merging is just as bad as it was in cvs. Git is a significant improvement over that. In addition, since Git is a true distributed source control system, I can easily do branches and merges on my local machine without an internet connection and just “push” my changes to my off-site server when it is convenient.

I am also a user of .mac. I like the service and the iDisk is probably my favorite feature. Therefore, I wondered, like chocolate and peanut butter, could I put these two together and come up with something better than the individual parts?
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