Clear default build settings

[keith]

It would be nice if there were a way to clear the default settings XcodeGen provides. This is useful if you define all your settings in xcconfig files, so when you generate the project, you don't want its default settings to shadow yours. I almost expected it to with this configuration:

name: Project
settings:
  base: []
targets:
  Project:
    type: application
    platform: iOS

But I understand these base settings are just additive to the project. In the meantime I might use xcodeproj to wipe these settings out after project generation.

[yonaskolb]

Interesting. This mirrors the thoughts in #77

[keith]

Ah yes, I think that kind of only half captures the problem though, since even if you're not overriding the setting, you may not want it to be set in the project. This happens for us a lot in our all Swift app, where we don't really want Objective-C build settings to be set, since future developers won't know if we actually need it, or if it was just set by default by Xcode

[yonaskolb]

What do you suggest as way to opt out of setting presets? There are presets for the project, debug and release configurations, each platform and each target

[keith]

I guess maybe a top level attribute for this? In theory it could also be per-target, but that seems like overkill?

[yonaskolb]

What about this?

options:
  clearBaseSettings: true

You can already clear debug and release settings by simply providing a different type other than debug or release

configs:
  Debug: none
  Release: none

[keith]

You can already clear debug and release settings by simply providing a different type other than debug or release

Oh interesting, is that all that is used for?

[yonaskolb]

Yep, that's all that does. It's documented in the Project spec

[yonaskolb]

Another option is to not apply the base settings if the config type is cleared.
From this:

buildSettings += SettingsPresetFile.base.getBuildSettings()
if let type = config.type {
    buildSettings += SettingsPresetFile.config(type).getBuildSettings()
}

to this:

if let type = config.type {
    buildSettings += SettingsPresetFile.base.getBuildSettings()
    buildSettings += SettingsPresetFile.config(type).getBuildSettings()
}

[pepicrft]

I'm more for the clearBaseSettings solution. I think it's more explicit and the attribute is at the level of the project, where it's getting applied. Modifying the project configuration based on a target attribute might be too implicit for the developer who wouldn't expect the base settings to be cleared. This could be solved by adding some documentation though.

[yonaskolb]

The configs aren’t a target level attribute, they live on the top level project. Also those debug and release settings actually get applied to the project, not the target

[pepicrft]

Cool! then I'd go with the solution that you proposed.

[yonaskolb]

@keith it's implemented here #100. Have a look and see if this suits your needs 👍

[yonaskolb]

There could still be another solution to clear all the presets including those in targets. Maybe an options.applySettingPresets which could be one of the following:

• all (default)
• targets (don't apply any project settings ie, base, debug or release)
• none

What do you think?
Maybe if we had that #100 wouldn't be needed as it would be strange to set all here and none on the configs?

[yonaskolb]

@keith, I've added a followup PR #101 that allows you to fully control the setting presets. Setting this to none removes the need for the commit I noticed you have here:
lyft@3d2fe09

[keith]

Awesome!!