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Take away Apple IOS and macOS related pain from me 💯 (building for apple)

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shivanshtalwar edited this page Dec 20, 2022 · 1 revision

We know you guys are excited about the progress and development of flutter_janus_client since you guys have shown consistent support and love towards the project, We decided to touch bases on the topic which many of you proficient developers face when it comes to targeting apple specific devices such as IOS and macOS

Building for IOS

Don't you agree things were much simpler when there was just one big old architecture x86_64 and building apps with flutter for ios was breeze. But with the introduction of m1 (arm64) chip from apple. developers owning m1 chip were stuck and frustrated when they have to go through extra technical steps just for building ios application on their macbooks.

So in this article we will address above pain that most m1 mac owners face.

To begin with we have to make sure our Podfile looks exactly like this

# Uncomment this line to define a global platform for your project
platform :ios, '11.0'

# CocoaPods analytics sends network stats synchronously affecting flutter build latency.
ENV['COCOAPODS_DISABLE_STATS'] = 'true'

project 'Runner', {
  'Debug' => :debug,
  'Profile' => :release,
  'Release' => :release,
}

def flutter_root
  generated_xcode_build_settings_path = File.expand_path(File.join('..', 'Flutter', 'Generated.xcconfig'), __FILE__)
  unless File.exist?(generated_xcode_build_settings_path)
    raise "#{generated_xcode_build_settings_path} must exist. If you're running pod install manually, make sure flutter pub get is executed first"
  end

  File.foreach(generated_xcode_build_settings_path) do |line|
    matches = line.match(/FLUTTER_ROOT\=(.*)/)
    return matches[1].strip if matches
  end
  raise "FLUTTER_ROOT not found in #{generated_xcode_build_settings_path}. Try deleting Generated.xcconfig, then run flutter pub get"
end

require File.expand_path(File.join('packages', 'flutter_tools', 'bin', 'podhelper'), flutter_root)

flutter_ios_podfile_setup

target 'Runner' do
  use_frameworks!
  use_modular_headers!

  flutter_install_all_ios_pods File.dirname(File.realpath(__FILE__))
end

# code chunk below is important make sure it exist in your podfile too
post_install do |installer|
  installer.pods_project.targets.each do |target|
    flutter_additional_ios_build_settings(target)
    target.build_configurations.each do |build_configuration|
      build_configuration.build_settings['EXCLUDED_ARCHS[sdk=iphonesimulator*]'] = 'arm64 i386'
    end
  end
end

after that make sure you have neccessary permissions in Runner/info.plist file

<?xml version="1.0" encoding="UTF-8"?>
<!DOCTYPE plist PUBLIC "-//Apple//DTD PLIST 1.0//EN" "http://www.apple.com/DTDs/PropertyList-1.0.dtd">
<plist version="1.0">
<dict>
	<key>CADisableMinimumFrameDurationOnPhone</key>
	<true/>
	<key>CFBundleDevelopmentRegion</key>
	<string>$(DEVELOPMENT_LANGUAGE)</string>
	<key>CFBundleDisplayName</key>
	<string>Example</string>
	<key>CFBundleExecutable</key>
	<string>$(EXECUTABLE_NAME)</string>
	<key>CFBundleIdentifier</key>
	<string>$(PRODUCT_BUNDLE_IDENTIFIER)</string>
	<key>CFBundleInfoDictionaryVersion</key>
	<string>6.0</string>
	<key>CFBundleName</key>
	<string>example</string>
	<key>CFBundlePackageType</key>
	<string>APPL</string>
	<key>CFBundleShortVersionString</key>
	<string>$(FLUTTER_BUILD_NAME)</string>
	<key>CFBundleSignature</key>
	<string>????</string>
	<key>CFBundleVersion</key>
	<string>$(FLUTTER_BUILD_NUMBER)</string>
	<key>LSRequiresIPhoneOS</key>
	<true/>
	<key>NSCameraUsageDescription</key>
	<string>Camera Usage!</string>
	<key>NSMicrophoneUsageDescription</key>
	<string>Microphone Usage!</string>
	<key>UILaunchStoryboardName</key>
	<string>LaunchScreen</string>
	<key>UIMainStoryboardFile</key>
	<string>Main</string>
	<key>UIStatusBarHidden</key>
	<false/>
	<key>UISupportedInterfaceOrientations</key>
	<array>
		<string>UIInterfaceOrientationPortrait</string>
		<string>UIInterfaceOrientationLandscapeLeft</string>
		<string>UIInterfaceOrientationLandscapeRight</string>
	</array>
	<key>UISupportedInterfaceOrientations~ipad</key>
	<array>
		<string>UIInterfaceOrientationPortrait</string>
		<string>UIInterfaceOrientationPortraitUpsideDown</string>
		<string>UIInterfaceOrientationLandscapeLeft</string>
		<string>UIInterfaceOrientationLandscapeRight</string>
	</array>
	<key>UIViewControllerBasedStatusBarAppearance</key>
	<false/>
</dict>
</plist>

Common Steps

If you can use Homebrew to manage cocoapods.

# Uninstall the local cocoapods gem
sudo gem uninstall cocoapods

# Reinstall cocoapods via Homebrew
brew install cocoapods
# STEP 1: Install ffi
sudo arch -x86_64 gem install ffi

# STEP 2: Re-install dependencies
arch -x86_64 pod install

Additional Information.

#1 For anyone seeing the arch: posix_spawnp: gem: Bad CPU type in executable error, you must first install Rosetta.

#2 If you run pod commands pretty often, setting up an alias in .zshrc or .bash_profile might be handy.

alias pod='arch -x86_64 pod'

Now last step is to make sure that you have all pod dependencies installed main one being flutter_webrtc

# make sure you are in ios folder of example
flutter clean . # better to run in to have a clean build
arch -x86_64 pod repo update
arch -x86_64 pod install

once you have done all of that you are ready to run your flutter app on simulator or real ios device.

Building for macOS

Building for macOS involves two steps setting up of permissions and then the common steps just update the Runner/DebugProfile.entitlements file with following content and jump over to common steps and that's it.

<?xml version="1.0" encoding="UTF-8"?>
<!DOCTYPE plist PUBLIC "-//Apple//DTD PLIST 1.0//EN" "http://www.apple.com/DTDs/PropertyList-1.0.dtd">
<plist version="1.0">
<dict>
	<key>com.apple.security.app-sandbox</key>
	<true/>
	<key>com.apple.security.cs.allow-jit</key>
	<true/>
	<key>com.apple.security.device.camera</key>
	<true/>
	<key>com.apple.security.device.microphone</key>
	<true/>
	<key>com.apple.security.network.client</key>
	<true/>
	<key>com.apple.security.network.server</key>
	<true/>
</dict>
</plist>

after all of that you can run flutter app on macos too.

Thanks for reading. See you next time :)

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