xcodebuild arguments ignored when using archive

Question

My name is Luca and I am currently working on iOS continuous integration to build apps in xcode for distribution (Ad Hoc and App Store) using shell-scripting.

So far I achieved good results with IPA files. My problem comes for distribution in App Store. To build a .app from script (passing some arguments) I do:

xcodebuild -scheme myScheme -configuration myConfiguration PRODUCT_NAME=myProductName TARGETED_DEVICE_FAMILY=myTargetedDeviceFamily .... etc

Since with XCode 4.2, apps submission is done using the XCode Organizer Window I must be able also to archive my executable.

Therefore I modify the previous command line as follow:

xcodebuild -scheme myScheme -configuration myConfiguration PRODUCT_NAME=myProductName TARGETED_DEVICE_FAMILY=myTargetedDeviceFamily .... etc      **archive**

Unfortunately after I do so, it seems that the 'archive' argument force xcodebuild to ignore the other ones (PRODUCT_NAME, TARGETED_DEVICE_FAMILY, ....) and my output is built using the XCode predefined build settings.

I want to be able to pass the arguments with xcodebuild and be effective, but the 'archive' action seems to prevent this.

I am going nuts, please help :)

Thanks

Answer 1

The archive action for xcodebuild seems to have a bug in Xcode 4.2. Normally overrides for the project configuration can be specified as either command-line parameters or via the -xcconfig parameter.

Although the build action honors them, archive does not. (Presumably this is because archive is a meta-action that invokes build internally, but doesn't pass-through the options to the internal invocation.) There is an OpenRadar bug that describes this issue, so presumably it's been reported to Apple.

Finally, note that if you're going to use the archive action from a script then you can't rely on the exit code from xcodebuild. The archive action always yields an exit code of 0 (success, by convention). To detect build failure you need to scrape the output.