How to read current app version in Xcode 11 with script

Question

Until Xcode 11, I used a script that reads the current app version (for the AppStore) and help me change the LaunchScreen since we can't use swift for that.

sourceFilePath="$PROJECT_DIR/$PROJECT_NAME/App/Base.lproj/LaunchScreen.storyboard"
versionNumber=$(/usr/libexec/PlistBuddy -c "Print CFBundleShortVersionString" "$INFOPLIST_FILE")
buildNumber=$(/usr/libexec/PlistBuddy -c "Print CFBundleVersion" "$INFOPLIST_FILE")

sed -i .bak -e "/userLabel=\"APP_VERSION_LABEL\"/s/text=\"[^\"]*\"/text=\"v$versionNumber\"/" "$PROJECT_DIR/$PROJECT_NAME/App/Base.lproj/LaunchScreen.storyboard"

But in Xcode 11 there is a new section inside the project's build settings called Versioning

And CFBundleShortVersionString automatically changed to $(MARKETING_VERSION). Xcode automatically handles that and I don't want to change it manually to an static number and let Xcode do it's work.

So the question is how can I access this new MARKETING_VERSION and set it to my launchScreen label using run script?

Redaredact

Answer 1

You can use it like any other project variable:

sourceFilePath="$PROJECT_DIR/$PROJECT_NAME/App/Base.lproj/LaunchScreen.storyboard"
versionNumber="$MARKETING_VERSION"
buildNumber="$CURRENT_PROJECT_VERSION"

sed -i .bak -e "/userLabel=\"APP_VERSION_LABEL\"/s/text=\"[^\"]*\"/text=\"v$versionNumber\"/" "$PROJECT_DIR/$PROJECT_NAME/App/Base.lproj/LaunchScreen.storyboard"

Interviewer

This is not working for me or I'm missing something. – Germin

Is there a way to print the current value of $MARKETING_VERSION also in the terminal? – Golter

@HansBondoka echo "The marketing version is: $MARKETING_VERSION" – Varien

Answer 2

Xcode 11-15

In terminal or bash script in your project you can use:

App version

xcodebuild -showBuildSettings | grep MARKETING_VERSION | tr -d 'MARKETING_VERSION =' // will be displayed 1.1.6

Build version

xcodebuild -showBuildSettings | grep CURRENT_PROJECT_VERSION | tr -d 'CURRENT_PROJECT_VERSION =' // will be displayed 7

Or (don't forget to change YouProjectName to your project name):

App version

cat YouProjectName.xcodeproj/project.pbxproj | grep -m1 'MARKETING_VERSION' | cut -d'=' -f2 | tr -d ';' | tr -d ' '

Build version

cat YouProjectName.xcodeproj/project.pbxproj | grep -m1 'CURRENT_PROJECT_VERSION' | cut -d'=' -f2 | tr -d ';' | tr -d ' '

Or slower method (Thx Joshua Kaden):

App version

xcodebuild -project YouProjectName.xcodeproj -showBuildSettings | grep "MARKETING_VERSION" | sed 's/[ ]*MARKETING_VERSION = //'

Build version

xcodebuild -project YouProjectName.xcodeproj -showBuildSettings | grep "CURRENT_PROJECT_VERSION" | sed 's/[ ]*CURRENT_PROJECT_VERSION = //'

Fealty

This works great if you have multiple build schemes that you need to get their version numbers. Just pass --scheme {SCHEME} to in the xcodebuild command. – Underdog

@Underdog should be -scheme {SCHEME}, working along with -workspace {name}.xcodeworkspace – Yep

cat worked like charm! Good one! – Ottoman

Answer 3

Couldn't find right answer on the internet, so I started digging.

Version and build numbers are displayed in ./PROJECTNAME.xcodeproj/project.pbxproj as MARKETING VERSION (MV) and CURRENT PROJECT VERSION (CPV).

I used sed to get the numbers. It finds first occurrence of MV or CPV, removes everything except the number, and returns result. In order for this to work, you need to do 2 things:

• navigate to projects root folder
• change PROJECTNAME to your project's name

Commands:

version_number=`sed -n '/MARKETING_VERSION/{s/MARKETING_VERSION = //;s/;//;s/^[[:space:]]*//;p;q;}' ./PROJECTNAME.xcodeproj/project.pbxproj`
build_number=`sed -n '/CURRENT_PROJECT_VERSION/{s/CURRENT_PROJECT_VERSION = //;s/;//;s/^[[:space:]]*//;p;q;}' ./PROJECTNAME.xcodeproj/project.pbxproj`

Result:

Note: If you have more targets in your workspace with different version and build numbers, this might or might not work for you, because it stops on first occurrence. In that case, good luck :)

Mar

Nice. Works for me. – Denver

You should use xcodebuild -showBuildSettings instead on direct reading project file – Embolism

xcodebuild -project ThreeOneOne.xcodeproj -showBuildSettings | grep "MARKETING_VERSION" | sed 's/[ ]*MARKETING_VERSION = //' – Hyoscyamine

Tried with -showBuildSettings on three projects and not getting the MARKETING_VERSION, nor CURRENT_PROJECT_VERSION. If you are getting it, thumbs up, go with it :) – Mar

@Mar hope you're already solved the problem. The reason you cannot obtain the MARKETING_VERSION is that you are working in a workspace instead of a project (hinted by you have three projects in hand). To get the version, you can issue this command: xcodebuild -workspace YourName.xcodeworkspace -scheme YourSchemeName -showBuildSettings | grep "MARKETING_VERSION" – Yep

Any ideas on how to get the first occurrence where its a number and not "$(inherited)" – Milling

Answer 4

I miss here a solution for multiple targets and configurations:

xcodebuild -target <target> -configuration <configuaration> -showBuildSettings  | grep -i 'MARKETING_VERSION' | sed 's/[ ]*MARKETING_VERSION = //'

• target: the name of the target
• configuration: Release, Debug

Hadfield

Thank you! That's exactly what I needed – Spud

Answer 5

If you use Bitrise then the following script will save you:

Extracting App Marketing Version

envman add --key=APP_VERSION_NO --value=`sed -n '/MARKETING_VERSION/{s/MARKETING_VERSION = //;s/;//;s/^[[:space:]]*//;p;q;}' ./${PATH_TO_YOUR_PROJECT_XCODEPROJ_FILE}/project.pbxproj`

Extracting App Build Number

Extract the Build Number from xcodeproj file only if you use Apple Generic versioning system otherwise extract the Build Number from the XCode project info.plist file.

Note: The following script extracts the Build Number from the xcodeproj file.

envman add --key=APP_BUILD_NO --value=`sed -n '/CURRENT_PROJECT_VERSION/{s/CURRENT_PROJECT_VERSION = //;s/;//;s/^[[:space:]]*//;p;q;}' ./${PATH_TO_YOUR_PROJECT_XCODEPROJ_FILE}/project.pbxproj`

Printing to console:

envman run bash -c 'echo "App Version: $APP_VERSION_NO"'

envman run bash -c 'echo "App Build No: $APP_BUILD_NO"'

Thanks to the answer by @babac

Metonymy

Answer 6

Most voted answers by now show how to extract the value through sed and further tools in the chain. Thought to provide a (simpler?) solution just through awk.

Just to give a little bit of context, following one-liner shows the culprit row:

xcodebuild -project MyProj/MyProj.xcodeproj -showBuildSettings | awk '/MARKETING_VERSION/ { print }'

# output
    MARKETING_VERSION = 0.0.1

Default awk field separator should be the space, and so it's just a matter of extracting the third field (MARKETING_VERSION is first, the equal sign is second):

xcodebuild -project MyProj/MyProj.xcodeproj -showBuildSettings | awk '/MARKETING_VERSION/ { print $3 }'

# output
0.0.1

HTH

Porshaport

why I get an error said DVTAssertions: Warning in /Library/Caches/com.apple.xbs/Sources/DVTiOSFrameworks/DVTiOSFrameworks-19450/DTDeviceKitBase/DTDKRemoteDeviceData.m:373 – Stedt

Hi @user2027712. With info provided, I have no idea. I suggest you open a dedicated question for that, providing all needed context, more information, etc. Better yet, if you haven't done already, try searching for that error message on the web. It does not look like an error coming from command line, which is the main topic of this answer. There must be something else wrong in your Xcode build I guess. – Porshaport

Answer 7

How about saving a value to CURRENT_PROJECT_VERSION ? did anyone managed to do this?

I can get the value like

buildNumber=$CURRENT_PROJECT_VERSION

but this doesn't work:

CURRENT_PROJECT_VERSION=""    or   $CURRENT_PROJECT_VERSION=""

In my case I'm trying to set it to ""

This line doesn't set the CURRENT_PROJECT_VERSION field too

/usr/libexec/PlistBuddy -c "Set :CFBundleVersion $buildNumber" "$appInfoPlist"

Gallion

Answer 8

If your project is set up to use Apple Generic Versioning then you may use this command:

agvtool what-marketing-version -terse1

More info on how to set up AGV can be found here.

Gauvin

This is actually a cleaner way if the version is set in the Info.plist file rather than in build settings. Thank you! – Fortier

Answer 9

For Node.js: there is xcode package. Example of usage:

const xcode = require('xcode');

const project = xcode.project('ios/PROJECT_NAME.xcodeproj/project.pbxproj').parse(() => {
  const config = project.pbxXCBuildConfigurationSection();
  const releaseScheme = Object.keys(config).find(key => config[key].name === 'Release');

  const version = config[releaseScheme].buildSettings.MARKETING_VERSION;
});

Previously I used the plist package, but with latest xCode changes it became outdated, since I'm not able to extract a version from Info.plist for React Native projects.

Cavity

Answer 10

I had similar issue and made it work by displaying MARKETING_VERSION itself:

version="$MARKETING_VERSION"
version+=" ("
version+=`/usr/libexec/PlistBuddy -c "Print CFBundleVersion" $SRCROOT/MyApp/Info.plist`
version+=")"

/usr/libexec/PlistBuddy "$SRCROOT/MyApp/Settings.bundle/Root.plist" -c "set PreferenceSpecifiers:1:DefaultValue $version"

Floorman

Answer 11

I'm developing a framework with this scenario:

• A workspace
• A framework target
• An aggregate target with 2 external scripts:
  • one for build a fat framework
  • other for prepare the release framework

The key is that in XCode 11 the aggregate framework script doesn't get run environment variables for other workspace targets so it's impossible to read the $MARKETING_VERSION from my framework target.

So the solution that works for me has been use PlistBuddy specifying the Info.plist result of the framework target build in this way:

FAT_FRAMEWORK="${SRCROOT}/build/${FRAMEWORK_NAME}.framework"
BUILD_NUMBER=$(/usr/libexec/PlistBuddy -c "Print CFBundleVersion" "${FAT_FRAMEWORK}/Info.plist")
VERSION_NUMBER=$(/usr/libexec/PlistBuddy -c "Print CFBundleShortVersionString" "${FAT_FRAMEWORK}/Info.plist")

Underclothing

Answer 12

You can use jq because xcodebuild has -json option.

❯ xcodebuild -showBuildSettings -json 2>/dev/null | jq '.[0].buildSettings.MARKETING_VERSION'
"0.1.0"

❯ xcodebuild -showBuildSettings -json 2>/dev/null | jq '.[0].buildSettings.CURRENT_PROJECT_VERSION'
"1"

jq -r prints raw value:

❯ xcodebuild -showBuildSettings -json 2>/dev/null | jq -r '.[0].buildSettings.MARKETING_VERSION'
0.1.0

❯ xcodebuild -showBuildSettings -json 2>/dev/null | jq -r '.[0].buildSettings.CURRENT_PROJECT_VERSION'
1

Modlin

What is jq? There's nothing on my Mac named jq. – Spanjian

It is a well-known JSON processing OSS software. jq is not installed by default. github.com/jqlang/jq / You may use any scripting language that can process JSON, or you may install jq with Homebrew. – Modlin

It would be helpful to put that info in your answer. – Spanjian