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Build iOS Apps on Linux and Windows


Hi folks! A few months ago I shared my Swift SDK for Darwin, which allows you to build iOS Swift Packages on Linux, amongst other things. I mentioned that a lot of work still needed to be done, such as handling codesigning, packaging, and bundling. I'm super excited to share that we've finally reached the point where all of these things are now possible with cross-platform, open source software. Enter, xtool! About xtool does a lot of things (because Xcode does a lot of things 😅)...

I am aware that the copyright situation with regard to reverse engineering for compatibility has changed recently (see Oracle vs Google), but I'm not sure to what extent that affects the terms in the license agreement. I've personally been using xtool on Mac hardware, where it's still very useful in that it's a lot more lightweight and declarative than Xcode, and for that matter when dual-booting a different OS (think Asahi Linux / Bootcamp Windows.) xtool itself doesn't vend any traces of the Apple SDKs / toolchains, which is why the setup process asks users to download and provide a copy of Xcode.xip themselves, and builds the iOS SDK on the spot.

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