Build an iOS library with Bitcode in order to have backwards compatibility with XCode 6. How?

Question

I am building an iOS static library and I want to provide support for bitcode. In order to achieve that I go to Build settings, search for "custom compiler flags" and add -fembed-bitcode. This builds the library with bitcode and everything works fine under XCode 7.

However by following the approach above I loose backwards compatibility with XCode 6. Having that said I have to ship 2 different library versions to my users, one with bitcode flag and one without since not everyone has upgraded to XCode 7.

Is there a way to have bitcode enabled library and have backwards compatibility without having to ship 2 different versions?

UPDATE:

Hello @Vinicius Jarina thank you for your message. I understand that you can create a fat library which I guess is a common practise. What I was doing so far was to build for both architecture:

xcodebuild -configuration "Release" -target "${FMK_NAME}" -sdK iphoneos 
xcodebuild -configuration "Release" -target "${FMK_NAME}" -sdk iphonesimulator

and then call lipo to package in a fat library like:

lipo -create "${DEVICE_DIR}/${FMK_NAME}" "${SIMULATOR_DIR}/${FMK_NAME}" -output "${INSTALL_DIR}/Versions/${FMK_VERSION}/${FMK_NAME}"

However, how can i do it now? I tried something like this based on this link, but with no luck:

xcodebuild -configuration "Release" -target "${FMK_NAME}" -sdk iphoneos
xcodebuild -configuration "Release" -target "${FMK_NAME}" -sdk iphonesimulator
xcodebuild -configuration "Release" OTHER_CFLAGS='-fembed-bitcode' -target "${FMK_NAME}" -sdk iphonesimulator
xcodebuild -configuration "Release" OTHER_CFLAGS='-fembed-bitcode' -target "${FMK_NAME}" -sdk iphoneos

and then create a fat lib like this:

lipo -create "${DEVICE_DIR}/${FMK_NAME}" "${SIMULATOR_DIR}/${FMK_NAME}" -output "${INSTALL_DIR}/Versions/${FMK_VERSION}/${FMK_NAME}"

how can i build in my scipt to include both and then package them in a fat-library?

UPDATE 2:

I finally managed to make this work and I list here my solution for others that may face the same issue:

xcodebuild -configuration "Release" ENABLE_BITCODE=NO -target "${FMK_NAME}" -sdK iphoneos 
xcodebuild -configuration "Release" ENABLE_BITCODE=NO -target "${FMK_NAME}" -sdk iphonesimulator
xcodebuild -configuration "Release" ENABLE_BITCODE=YES -target "${FMK_NAME}" -sdk iphonesimulator
xcodebuild -configuration "Release" ENABLE_BITCODE=YES -target "${FMK_NAME}" -sdk iphoneos

and then create a fat lib like this:

lipo -create "${DEVICE_DIR}/${FMK_NAME}" "${SIMULATOR_DIR}/${FMK_NAME}" -output "${INSTALL_DIR}/Versions/${FMK_VERSION}/${FMK_NAME}"

Answer 1

You can try to create a fat-library using different libraries.

lipo -create -output libAndreasv.a libAndreasvBitcode.a libAndreasvARMv7.a libAndreasvARM64.a

This used to work for fat libraries (x86,x64,ARMv7,ARM64) should work for bitcode as well.