Insert Subversion revision number in Xcode

Question

I would like to insert the current Subversion revision number (as reported by svnversion) into my Xcode project. I managed to insert the revision number into the Info.plist in the $PROJECT_DIR, but this is not a good solution, since the file is versioned. I tried to insert the revision into the Info.plist in the build directory, but then I get an error during the code signing phase (this is an iPhone application).

Is there a simple way to get the revision number into the application using some build files, so that the changing revision does not change versioned files? I thought maybe I could create a temporary source file that would link with the others and provide a function to get the revision number. But I don’t know how to do that.

I am not much interested in other solutions, ie. the agvtool. All I want is the revision number available to the application, without too much magic.

Answer 1

There's a much simpler solution: using PlistBuddy, included at /usr/libexec/PlistBuddy in Leopard. See my answer to a related SO question for details.

PlistBuddy can be used in a Run Script build phase from within Xcode, and can be used to only affect the processed plist file. Just put it after the Copy Resources phase, and you don't even have to clean the target for it to run each time. You don't even have to print the value to a header file and make SVN ignore it, either.

echo -n ${TARGET_BUILD_DIR}/${INFOPLIST_PATH} \
    | xargs -0 /usr/libexec/PlistBuddy -c "Set :CFBundleVersion `svnversion -n`"

Assuming you add the build phase before code signing occurs, your plist should be signed with the substituted value.

Answer 2

For posterity, I did something similar to zoul for iPhone applications, by adding a revision.h to my project, then adding the following as a Run Script build phase:

REV=`/usr/bin/svnversion -nc ${PROJECT_DIR} | /usr/bin/sed -e 's/^[^:]*://;s/[A-Za-z]//'`
echo "#define kRevisionNumber @\"$REV\"" > ${PROJECT_DIR}/revision.h

I did this to grab a simple revision number, as opposed to the more detailed string that svnversion produces in zoul's solution.

For Mac applications, I based my approach on this post, and instead created a buildnumber.xcconfig file. Under the build settings for the target, I changed the Based On value in the lower-right-hand corner of the dialog to buildnumber.xcconfig. Within the Info.plist, I edited the following lines:

<key>CFBundleVersion</key>
<string>${BUILD_NUMBER}</string>
<key>CFBundleShortVersionString</key>
<string>Version 1.0</string>

So that my About dialog would display a version string similar to Version 1.0 (1234), where 1234 is the Subversion revision number. Finally, I created a Run Script build phase with the following code:

REV=`/usr/bin/svnversion -nc ${PROJECT_DIR} | /usr/bin/sed -e 's/^[^:]*://;s/[A-Za-z]//'`
echo "BUILD_NUMBER = $REV" > ${PROJECT_DIR}/buildnumber.xcconfig

This may not be the cleanest way, as it requires a clean cycle before building for the new revision to take hold in the application, but it works.