Configuring the Virtual Machine to Build iOS Apps

After going through the Installing Tartelet and Configuring Tartelet articles, you are now ready to start the GitHub Actions runners. However, if you are planning to use the runners to build iOS apps, you will need to do some additional configuration on the virtual machine.

This article describes the additional steps we have performed at Shape to configure the virtual machine to build iOS apps.

1. Install Homebrew

We install Homebrew for two reasons:

• Throughout this article we will use it to install software.
• Our workflows may use Homebrew to install software they depend on.

Run the following command to install Homebrew.

/bin/bash -c "$(curl -fsSL https://raw.githubusercontent.com/Homebrew/install/HEAD/install.sh)"

Remember to follow the steps printed by Homebrew after the installation to finalize the setup.

2. Install xcodes

We use xcodes to install new versions of Xcodes on the virtual machine. Install xcodes by running the following command.

brew install robotsandpencils/made/xcodes

3. Install aria2

Install aria2 to have xcodes download versions of Xcode faster. This is mentioned in the README in xcodes' repository. Install aria2 by running the following command.

brew install aria2

4. Install the latest version of Xcode

Use xcodes to install the latest version of Xcode. The command below installs Xcode 14.2. Remember to replace the version number with the version you wish to install.

xcodes install 14.2

ℹ️ Note

By default xcodes names the installed app something like Xcodes-14.2.app with dashes. However, the GitHub runners uses underscores instead of dashes. We do the same at Shape to keep our runners as close to GitHub's runners as possible. Therefore we rename the app after xcodes has successfully installed it.

Then make the installed version the default by running the following command. Once again, replace the version number with the version of Xcode you installed.

xcodes select 14.2