How to update Swift dependencies in Xcode

28
votes

After I create a new swift package with dependencies I call swift package generate-xcodeproj. If my dependencies have a new version I call swift package update. The new version of my dependency gets downloaded and built but Xcode now has a bad reference to the old version of the dependency. I can call swift package generate-xcodeproj again but this will remove any custom targets I have setup.

How do I update my swift dependencies and my Xcode project without deleting my custom targets?

4
swiftxcodeswift-package-manager
I have this same question. Generating a new copy of the .xcodeproj also removes any folder structure that was being used to organize source files. - Craig Otis
I built a tool to help with this. github.com/saltzmanjoelh/XcodeHelperCli After you build and copy it to /usr/local/bin or wherever you can call xchelper update-packages -s This will update your packages and create symlinks for your Xcode project. This way when your packages get new versions, you don't have to update the references manually. - joels

4 Answers

34
votes

I just stumbled upon this question and found that the solution to "How to update swift dependencies in Xcode" has probably changed now that Swift Packages have been around for a few years.

For me, the solutions was to simply go to File -> Swift Packages -> Update to Latest Package Versions.

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10
votes

Instead of trying to preserve your changes to generated project, you can manage dependencies in a separate project, like CocoaPods does.

When starting new project:

  1. create Xcode project for your app MyApp.xcodeproj
  2. save as a workspace MyApp.xcworkspace
  3. create package for your dependencies
mkdir MyDeps && cd MyDeps
swift package init --type library
  1. add dependencies to Package.swift
  2. generate Xcode project for the dependencies package
swift package generate-xcodeproj
  1. add generated project MyDeps.xcodeproj to your workspace MyApp.xcworkspace
  2. add target MyDeps.framework to Linked Frameworks of your app MyApp.xcodeproj

With this setup you can freely update dependencies in Package.swift and regenerate dependent project as needed.

3
votes

Many of the problems with packages not updating are because the swift package version rules limit the automatic package updates to the current major version only, i.e v3.3.1 of a package will update to v3.4.0, but will not update automatically to v4.0.1. Therefore using the update options in Xcode does not necessarily get the latest major version of a package.

To resolve, Open the project from the project panel, select the project (not the targets), then select the "Swift Packages" tab. Double click on the package you want to update and change the minimum version to the next major version.

enter image description here

1
votes

I had an issue with CryptoSwift using Xcode 12.5. My version was 1.3.1 and the issue was fixed in 1.4.0. I tried :

  1. updating by File -> Swift Packages -> Update to Latest Package Versions.
  2. xcodebuild -resolvePackageDependencies

But both did not work.

I manually went and changed target -> Swift packages -> Version rules and Xcode automatically installed the newer version and I was out of my error.