Apple seriously needs to add a macOS Simulator to the Xcode toolset, like, yesterday. You should be able to install macOS runtimes just like every other platform, and build and run apps directly from Xcode to any of them. Doing compatibility testing for macOS is a nightmare compared to iOS
@stroughtonsmith Also testing App Intents in a sandboxed environment should be possible. Testing macOS App Intents in Debug AND Release Builds on the same Mac is really a pain. When having some debug binaries or old archives in derived data on your Mac, the App Intents for your Release build won't work (at least when called from the Shortcuts app). Took my days to figure out what was going on here. https://norden.social/@czottmann/110566880320830601
@stroughtonsmith this sounds great, but I just ran into/remembered that Ventura can’t use any simulators before iOS 14. Really seems to be no good options beyond keeping Macs that boot into old OSes 👎
@stroughtonsmith assuming they used their built-in macOS emulator, right now the biggest testing block for me is lack of iCloud sign-in support, though maybe that’s not as big a deal for testing apps (I honestly don’t know)
@andrew_writes that's a huge deal for apps — how do we test our iCloud sync, push notifications, install from TestFlight, etc. I have no idea why they haven't fixed that already
@andrew_writes doesn't even need to be unique, it just needs to be valid! I run all my ESXi VMs off a single serial number, and App Store et al work fine
@stroughtonsmith I filed a FB for virtualization framework to take provioining profiles as input at install time. That would save a ton of time at VM creation & config of new builds.
@stroughtonsmith For me, this is literally the worst part about writing Mac apps. You can’t install the latest Xcode on older macOS. VMs can’t sign into your AppleID so you can’t build or run the debugger, even if you can build in an older version of Xcode. Every bug on not-the-latest macOS takes 5 times more effort to fix and makes me want to drop our macOS build, entirely.
@chucker@cocoawithlove@stroughtonsmith My guess: They either hand out several MacBooks to each dev or they have a secret internal system, like, “Apple ID in VMs works but is geofenced to the Apple campus” ;)
@czottmann@cocoawithlove@stroughtonsmith yeah, I can see a mechanism where their own staff gets a token/certificate that’s valid for, like, a month, and once you have that, you don’t need your Apple ID to verify team membership.
@stroughtonsmith I had the same thought. Simulators allow us to have fewer test devices, yet we should have multiple Macs running different OS versions or have numerous partitions to switch. I'm sure that virtualization can solve this issue once and for all.
@stroughtonsmith I hope for that (or something docker like for macOS images) every year at WWDC.
We run compatibility testing across Mac and Linux at the @SwiftPackageIndex and have two identical Linux machines running all Linux builds - and three uniquely configured macOS machines for the Apple builds. I.e. redundancy on Linux and three single points of failure on macOS.
Swift versions are so much easier to handle on Linux.
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