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I wish there was better documentation for this for Xcode 5 but I couldn't find anything decent describing best practices for working with workspaces, so..

In a workspace with several projects (couple frameworks, 1 app) is it possible to have Xcode build all dependent projects only when required (i.e. changes found) w/o having to include all projects in all dependent projects?

I'd rather like to just have the frameworks in the project depending on it instead of having 5-6 sub projects in it as this is just a mess in the Navigation View -
files inside sub-projects show up in search results all the time, sub-projects in the NavView expand for whatever reason within projects..

However, w/o including projects a particular project depends on I couldn't find a way to have Xcode 5 re-build the frameworks automatically if one of the dependencies has changed.

Jay
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6 Answers6

50

This solution was intended for another problem, but maybe it fills your needs.

After adding your subproject to the workspace:

  1. Select the Target which should use the newly added subproject
  2. In "Link Binaries with Libraries" under Build Phases hit the + button
  3. If the Library does´t show up hit "Add Other..."
  4. Navigate to the Folder where the project file (*.xcodeproj) lies
  5. Mark it and hit "Open"
  6. Now you should see the Project File show up under "Link Binaries with Libraries"
  7. Under "Target Dependencies" in the same tab, hit the + button
  8. Now you should see the necessary files
  9. Check yours and hit "Add"
  10. Again in the "Link Binaries with Libraries" hit the + button
  11. Now your .a file should show up and you can choose and add it

Now you are using the chosen library for your target. Repeat those steps for every target which needs this subproject. Hope that helps! For me it did because i could not manage to add dependencies to it before...

Greetz, Tomte

Tomte
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    This doesn't work if Implicit Dependencies are turned off, which dramatically slow down indexing and building in large workspaces. – Paul Beusterien Apr 19 '14 at 21:36
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    See [Raspu's Answer](http://stackoverflow.com/a/34202139/616644) if you are having trouble with XCode 7. – Rick Smith Mar 15 '16 at 22:36
  • Note that this is a convoluted way of adding a project reference to your project. After you've followed all the steps above, try removing the project from "Link Binaries with Libraries" and observe that you still have a reference to the project under the "Target Dependency" section. This is because a reference to the sub-project was added to the project when it was brought into "Link Binaries with Libraries." You can find this reference under the "Frameworks" directory. – Fostah Feb 03 '17 at 20:23
  • Unfortunately this doesn't work (at least not on Xcode 8 or 9). I still get `No such module 'TheModuleNameHere'` where I import with `import TheModuleNameHere`. – solidcell Oct 04 '17 at 15:21
21

Just in case somebody else is having problems with this in Xcode 7: Make sure the project you want to add as subproject it's not open, before you add it or drop it.

JP Illanes
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    Thanks for this. I found that I also had to close another project that used the subproject in order to get it to add. (i.e "Make sure the project you want to add as a subproject is not open, even as a subproject in another project, before you add it or drop it") – Kevin May 25 '16 at 13:05
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    Thank you thank you was tearing my hair out for an hour. – Keith Knauber Jan 09 '17 at 20:28
  • This helped me with Xcode 14. – Ben Thomas Dec 07 '22 at 19:24
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    @BenThomas Crazy that something I posted 7 years ago it's still useful to people… – JP Illanes Dec 09 '22 at 16:44
8

In Xcode 5 you have to:

  • Select the project on the left tab
  • Choose the target in the TARGETS section
  • Then in Build Phases > Target Dependencies press "+"
  • Choose the added project as target it will appear in the Target Dependencies list

If it works, when building all target dependencies will be build together if needed.

shim
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loretoparisi
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    Doesn't work for me - if the other project the current project depends on it cannot be added in *Build Phases*, neither via **+** nor via Drag&Drop from the other projects in the work space. – Jay Oct 22 '13 at 20:51
  • Try first to drag&drop the second project to the first one. Then go to Build Phase > Target Dependencies. Here when pressing "+" you should see the second project to be selected. – loretoparisi Oct 23 '13 at 16:37
  • I have a framework and another project in one workspace and this solved the problem of workspace clones not building dependancies. Thanks – Saoud Rizwan Mar 13 '17 at 10:20
6

You could create a scheme that builds all targets.

ulle
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    Hmm.. true - but that'd be the brute force approach. I'd rather have Xcode intelligently build only the required dependencies. – Jay Oct 07 '13 at 18:07
  • @Jay On large projects I've worked on, sometimes I want my main binary to compile (using already built dependencies), and other times I want to build the entire dependency chain. Doing a full build on our project could take hours, which I'm willing to do when I make breaking changes on frameworks, but I'm not willing to do this when I'm making changes in my main binary. This happens when you have all the source code. With custom schemes I can do clean builds on specific targets, run tests for specific targets, and really have full control of the Xcode IDE. I would say this setup is a bit rare. – Michael Ozeryansky Jun 14 '18 at 21:06
  • this DOES work but is bad because in order to have it build as a dependency, you need to turn OFF parallel building, which ruins everyones lives by making the build very slow. – drewster Dec 16 '20 at 20:37
6

This is derived from Tomte's answer. His approach was causing me a Dependency Analysis Error. This is a more straight forward approach and explains why Tomte's answer works:

  1. Click on the sub-project and drag it into the project that needs to target the sub-project.
  2. The options alert should now be displayed. Make sure Copy items if needed is not selected. Make sure Create groups is selected. Make sure none of the project's targets are selected. Press the Finish button.
  3. Click on the project that you just added the sub-project reference to.
  4. Click on the target that you want to have a dependency on the sub-project.
  5. Click the Target Dependecies + button.
  6. Notice the sub-project's product is listed as an option. Select it.

Note that when using Tomte's approach, when the project is added to Link Binary With Libraries, a project reference is created. This project reference can be found in the Frameworks group of the project.

I'm conflicted as to whether this is a good approach or not. The scheme approach is not much better, in my opinion. I'm actually wondering why workspace project's don't have this relationship by default.

At the very least, this should clear up the magic in Tomte's solution.

Fostah
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-4

Consider migrating to CocoaPods.

Not only it will fix your build problems, but with a project as complex as you describe it will ease your life when updating/adding/removing frameworks, changing target system version and resolving dependencies and conflicts.

Also your workspace will likely become only two projects.

Rivera
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  • Hmm - interesting. Though I can't see how a dependency management would solve the issues within Xcode when we want all projects to be loaded at once. – Jay Apr 21 '14 at 07:21
  • Probably the dependencies and the dependencies of the dependencies in your current workspace are so complex that Xcode fails to properly decide what to build again. – Rivera Apr 28 '14 at 01:16
  • Just good old application layers, really - foundation classes, modules, application building on top of each other. No cycles, nothing fancy. Just a bunch of projects depending on the projects in the lower layers of the system. – Jay May 02 '14 at 15:16
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    It's not all fun and games; you'll find yourself running `pod install` very often, which, when it takes a minute or so each time, it really slows you down. – fatuhoku Nov 21 '15 at 01:52
  • @fatuhoku You can always add the `Pods` or `Carthage` projects to your git instead of ignoring it. It has many benefits (eg if someone removes the repo you still have it, you are under version control of that project, git blame is super fast, switching between commits is super fast etc). – Nat Sep 28 '17 at 07:41