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by blashyrk 908 days ago
Now imagine that the workspace/project format for the defacto IDE for all Apple related stuff uses this exact same format, mixed with some random binary blobs and it keeps track of all project settings and file structure. Now imagine merging that in your VCS of choice whenever another team member makes any change to any of the aforementioned things.

Good news! You don't have to imagine! You can live this fever dream yourself by using Xcode.

How a company with that much money can unironically produce such dumpster fire garbage of a so-called IDE is beyond my comprehension.
3 comments
JimDabell 908 days ago
> Now imagine that the workspace/project format for the defacto IDE for all Apple related stuff uses this exact same format

It doesn’t. Xcode project files are something that look a bit like a cross between JSON and an INI file. This is unofficial documentation showing what it looks like:

http://www.monobjc.net/xcode-project-file-format.html

That isn’t a property list; it’s something inherited from Project Builder from NeXTSTEP, which Xcode was originally based upon. Xcode project files would be a lot easier to deal with if they were property list files, because they are a standard, documented format with official tools to work with them. The Xcode project file format isn’t officially documented and doesn’t have generic manipulation tools like plutil.

Maybe you are mixing the project file up with the Info.plist file? That is a property list file, but its purpose is to tell the operating system about the application. It’s not the Xcode project file.

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xenadu02 908 days ago
This is the original ASCII plist file format from NeXTSTEP. Foundation still supports reading these but not writing them.
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saagarjha 908 days ago
What binary blobs? It's a text file?
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guhidalg 908 days ago
This is one of the unexpected externalities of Apple’s walled garden. You may not deal with Xcode directly if you use Xamarin et al. then some poor soul somewhere has to sacrifice their first born every year when Xcode received an update.

If Apple allowed other App Stores, they would have to make Xcode not suck.

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