[jpsim]

This post makes no mention of the macOS part of the CircleCI infrastructure, which is one of the trickiest parts of infrastructure IMHO. Tricky because Apple's EULA prevents virtualizing on anything other than its hardware, never more than 4 VMs per host, and not for commercial purposes...

[seanwilson]

Apple's policy on VMs feels so backwards and it really bothers me. Apple expect you to have dedicated hardware if you want to do CI? It makes Mac/iOS projects a real pain and that's not including how much hassle Xcode only functionality is to script.

[falsedan]

Apple are a hardware company… they don't make money unless you buy their hardware.

[seanwilson]

You'd think Apple would be interested in making the workflow for developers easier though so better apps would be made.

It's slightly better now but I've done iOS+Android mobile projects before where CI for Android has been easy to set up and CI for iOS has been a complete nightmare.

[falsedan]

I think the workflow is pretty easy: buy a MacBook & an iPhone, and load your app onto the phone & test on it for things which the iOS simulator is not good at.

Don't CI your apps, CI your libraries.

[seanwilson]

> I think the workflow is pretty easy: buy a MacBook & an iPhone, and load your app onto the phone & test on it for things which the iOS simulator is not good at.

> Don't CI your apps, CI your libraries.

That's not scalable for complicated apps that you can write automated UI tests for though.

[falsedan]

Could you take the complicated bits and put them in a library? How complicated is your app?

To me, what you described is an app that was not designed to be easy to test component-by-component & will have a high overhead on maintenance. Apple’s restriction on virtualising MacOS seems unrelated to how the app was architected, so it feels unfair to expect Apple to alter their position to better support something they weren’t responsible for.

[santaclaus]

But most of the hardware sales are iPhones. Mac sales are dominated by portables, and I doubt that many serious providers are hosting anything off of MacBooks.

[jbob2000]

Apple just needs to handle the build process themselves. Let me upload my app code and you do all the hard work. It's not like I can deploy to other app stores...

[ec109685]

Apple supports enterprise distribution outside the app store. Like the idea though.

[toomuchtodo]

Email Tim and ask him for this: [e-mail]

[karmelapple]

Not quite sure if I understand the question, but we've been using their iOS product for a couple years now and have appreciated their support. They upped their game last year with a key hire or two, although there were growing pains.

Overall we are happy with it. I don't think CircleCI 2.0 is available yet for iOS, though, so nothing new to discuss yet.

[jpsim]

My comment wasn't a question, but rather highlighting that a major part of their stack wasn't so much as mentioned in an article about their stack.

[hb3b]

A provision they have never enforced.

On the topic of QA testing/automation, it really kills me that Apple servers won't sign older iOS releases which means QA teams need to protect stock devices from accidental upgrades. The AWS Device Farm iOS devices are all jailbroken.

[koolba]

What's the commercial usage limitation? Is that specifically for virtualization of OSX to prevent offering a "Mac On Demand" by not letting you run the OS itself?

[jpsim]

Turns out it's two, not four VMs. From macOS Sierra's EULA[0]:

> (iii) to install, use and run up to two (2) additional copies or instances of the Apple Software within virtual operating system environments on each Mac Computer you own or control that is already running the Apple Software, for purposes of: (a) software development; (b) testing during software development; (c) using macOS Server; or (d) personal, non-commercial use.

[0]: http://images.apple.com/legal/sla/docs/macOS1012.pdf

[orf]

Wouldn't it be covered by c, though? It's an or condition, not an and, the way I read it.

[e12e]

With c) you're allowed to run up to 2 copies. It doesn't really help you run a hundred containers on a powerful server... (Not that you easily legally could, as I guess the moat powerful Mac hw available is the Mac pro - not exactly great for rack deployment).

[ed: i guess you mean running os x server is an alternative to "non commercial use" - I agree with that reading. The option for nc use seems like a nod to not completely make experimentation and creative development/research entirely illegal.]

[tedmiston]

That's interesting. I always wondered why Macminicolo was so expensive relative to a Linux host (and how they did it).