There isn't an Xcode for iOS, but there is an increasingly capable iOS development environment for iOS, and I expect that this cloud offering is intended to eventually complement that well.
Much of the stuff that Xcode Cloud does is automation that's ~easy with a terminal and some scripting and that many developers end up doing on their Macs, but that is hard to do in the limited computing environment that iOS offers – things like packaging apps for TestFlight with the right signing keys, compressing images, etc. By moving those processes to automation running in the cloud, Apple are making iOS development on iOS more feasible.
You mean, there is (1) first-party children's sandbox that is being provided by Apple's good graces and private entitlements, written in their own language and only allowing you to publish applications to their heavily taxed storefront?
Yeah. Sounds like Apple is starting to get serious about their developer market, huh?
I didn't say it was for everyone, or a general purpose development environment.
iOS developers have been asking to be able to do iOS development on iOS for a long time, and that's exactly what Apple are delivering. It's certainly not just a children's sandbox either.
> It's certainly not just a children's sandbox either.
It might as well be, it's not like you'd be making any apps that Apple doesn't directly profit off of. Pretty much as interesting as Nintendo's Toy-Con Garage.
Much of the stuff that Xcode Cloud does is automation that's ~easy with a terminal and some scripting and that many developers end up doing on their Macs, but that is hard to do in the limited computing environment that iOS offers – things like packaging apps for TestFlight with the right signing keys, compressing images, etc. By moving those processes to automation running in the cloud, Apple are making iOS development on iOS more feasible.