Why doesn't Xcode 4 create any products?

Question

Regardless of build configuration, building my iPad app does not actually output a .app file. It does run in the iPad simulator and on a device, but when I hit build or build and run, the binary appears under Products in red and is not created in the "build" folder as designated in build settings.

Any ideas?

Answer 1

Xcode 4 places its build products and other intermediaries/temporary files/indexes in a derived data directory now instead of a "build" directory that is mixed in with your product files. It does this to deal with the new workspaces and also so that you can have clean builds of different projects in different workspaces without contaminating each other.

If your original template was old, your built product is probably relative to your source directory instead of relative to your built products directory, which is why it's showing up red. By default, your derived data directory will be under ~/Library/Developer/Xcode/DerivedData. To see where your current workspace/project is placing these files, you can File->Workspace Settings... and take a look at the Build Location.

Answer 2

I was having this problem. not only the product .app was red, also simulator wasn't loaded the binary, it was stuck in attaching 'my app'. i solved it by going to file->project settings. in the tab 'build' changed derived data location to 'project-relative', and in advanced changed build location to 'locations specified by targets'. with the default options it wasn't possible to run the app, i'm not sure why.