Continuous Integration for Xcode projects?

Question

After using Hudson for continuous integration with a prior project, I want to set up a continuous integration server for the iPhone projects I'm working on now. After doing some research it looks like there aren't any CI engines designed specifically for Xcode, but one guy has had success using Cruise Control combined with the xcodebuild CLI tool. Has anyone here tried this? Are there any CI engines that work well with Xcode projects?

I'm probably going to give Cruise Control a try. I'll post an answer with my findings.

Answer 1

I've used CruiseControl with Xcode (similiar to what Pragmatic Automation suggested) and had reasonable success. I'm also very familiar with CruiseControl and it's relatively horrific configuration format setup.

I've also used BuildBot to good effect, but found that it's strengths didn't really match my needs (distributed slaves building and reporting across multiple different systems). Configurating buildbot setups can be an art in and of itself, although it's not difficult. It's all essentially writing scripts in python.

Since Hudson has become available, I'd recommend it as an avenue for running continuous integration. It has a web based interface (CruiseControl's primary deficiency in my mind) and is very flexible in the various systems that it supports. You can invoke command line driven builds quite easily and very obviously. That said, I haven't set up an instance using Hudson and Xcode, where I have for the other systems, so this is partially speculation on my part.

Answer 2

Apple just release (June 10th, 2013) for OSX Mavericks(OS X 10.9) a new continuous integration platform which is the most integrated continuous integration solution that I have seen before. It is available from developer.apple.com, here in this page has the details:

https://developer.apple.com/library/ios/documentation/IDEs/Conceptual/xcode_guide-continuous_integration/

I recommend to see the wwdc 2013 presentation on the topic.

Answer 3

Jenkins seems to work well for some people. (Although, I have never used any CI server before. )

https://wiki.jenkins-ci.org/display/JENKINS/Xcode+Plugin