The main goal of this project is to have just one build in your Adhoc share medium. To reduce the consumed space that comes as a side effect of having many environments in one app. The idea is that with just one build you could switch between the different environments with relative ease.
Example image:
Right now the project consists on 2 targets: Release and CI (Continuous integration) -just like before on most projects-, and 5 schemas (this is the new part): Release, Test, Stage, Prod and Share.
Well, the Release schema is the one that will be released to the AppStore and is linked to the Release target. This schema-target combo, does not include the setting bundle, and will always point to the Production environment.
Then we have Test, Stage and Prod, this 3 schemas are shortcuts for developers. When one of this schemas is run from Xcode it will force the environment accordingly.
Finally we have the new schema Share this one is the one that is meant to be used for Share builds. This one does not force any environment, though it defaults to the testing environment.
This is done by using the Environment Variables of the schemas. A new variable named "environment" is defined with an integer value of 0, 1 or 2. Each of those values correspond to an environment. Then on launch the Environment control object configures accordingly.
It is important to note that the Share schema does not implement this variable. This allows for the schema to remain dynamic when launching from Xcode.
Right now there's a control property called: shouldForceRestart. If this property is true, an alert view will be displayed on top of the window blocking further use of the app and requiring the app to be killed and restarted. Else, if the property is false, a notification is propagates and can be subscribed to from where needed.
For the time being there's not much else. Though a list of TODOs is being made and accepts suggestions from all.
- Make a TODO list.
It's is a complicated question to answer.
The benefits from using this would be:
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Easier to change environments, no need to install a new build.
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Less space used on your Share drive, because we only need to have 1 build for all the environments. (This does not apply to test features that are not merged with the develop branch)
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No need for MACROS (which are weird to use in swift for some reason)
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Straight forward setup
The cons would be:
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Might be trickier to explain to clients on how to use.
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No use of MACROS, which means everything is compiled. (Though is not necessarily true. MACROS can be used across the app just not to define the environments)