Xcode bots vs Jenkins

Question

At the risk of this question being "too vague" here goes...!

We have a Jenkins system running for other (non iOS) software projects. I want to set up nightly Xcode build and deploy to Testflight for a number of iOS projects. The question is which is the best way to go. It feels right to use the built in XCode mechanism for automated builds but given Jenkins is in place are there any significant benefits to using Jenkins over XCode bots?

Some criteria are: - Ease of setup - Reliability - Minimising pain when xcode features change

Thanks

Jarita

Answer 1

Xcode bots are fairly easy to set up, depending on your source control configuration. The big win for Bots over Jenkins is that Bots are tightly integrated with Xcode.

You can monitor, create, and modify your bots right from the Log Navigator, and only the bot for the particular project and branch will show, which is nice when you have dozens of bots on your server. Also, when you click on a failed test or warning or analysis issue that a particular build has, you will be taken directly to the offending line in Xcode (if you're viewing the bot in Xcode).

Monitor and Manage Bots in the Bot Viewer

Copalite

Thanks for the advice. I setup both Xcodebots and Jenkins and found that Jenkins was far more straightforward and less fraught with strange problems! My flow was checkout > build > sign > deploy to test flight. Xcodebots felt really raw and there is a ton of people who seem to have had similar problems getting this simple flow working. Jenkins has a really great community and typically I found an answer to all the questions I had along the way. – Jarita

We're about to give up on xcode bots and use Jenkins instead. Xcode CI/bots just seems so fragile - updates to OS X etc. just completely breaking our build system etc. – Thorvald

still feel this way? I know they updated osx server recently @Thorvald – Brian

I've not looked at Xcode CI lately, so not sure about quality of recent changes! – Thorvald

Bots worked well for us in the first version. Then Apple broke the whole the whole thing. We abandoned bots and are now using Travis. – Copalite