Coding from a non-Mac PC while building on a Mac
I started using XCode to make an iOS app from my Macbook, and I have been trying to find a way to write code from my Linux PC, as I prefer coding there. I spent some time looking for ways I could remotely write code to my laptop, and build my app there, but I haven't found a good solution yet.
If anyone knows a way to achieve this I would appreciate it
Here are some things I tried:
Something that kind of worked was using rsync with SSH to transfer my project directory to my Mac and have it built there, however, a big problem was that the build errors did not appear in my IDE.
Another tool I tried was Fleet from JetBrains, using its remote development feature, which apparently works for ‘common’ XCode projects, but my project is a Swift playground (with the .swiftpm extensions) and as Fleet is still in early access it doesn’t support this yet. (The remote development feature did work though, just without error highlighting)Thanks for the help in advance!
11 Replies
Are you not just looking for a remote desktop?
I remember needing this for work and I think (really not sure) I used something like FreeRDP to access a windows pc with remote desktop
Yeah, remote desktop seems like the easiest solution. By not seeing errors in your IDE, I assume you mean that the output in XCode isn't exposed via SSH
I tried using a remote desktop and it seems to be the most usable so far. I am just surprised that there are no alternatives to using XCode in this way.
@Kugabi Did you look into fastlane? https://fastlane.tools/ - this is a tool I tend to use for any on-mac builds from CI/CD pipelines and I think it can be adopted simply for remote builds.
can't you use vscode and then just build the app using xcode or something? I am not interested into mac, ios and similar, so i don't know if that's possible. But if it is, give it a shot, vscode has it's own remote server
Thanks for the suggestion, I will look into it
This is what I am trying to do as well, I opened this question because I was surprised by the lack of tools that would make this simpler (in terms of exposing the XCode output into vscode)
Well I guess that's because if you had the trouble getting a mac, then you probably would use the mac to code. I would prefer some solution like @Rivenris suggested to run like a remote build on the mac if I had both machines. A while ago in the peak mac intel era I built a hackintosh dual booted in my main rig to be able to develop iOS. It was quite good. Of course was not like being able to mess aroud with the whole OS like in linux but would be ok enought to be not in the way or annoying
if i understood you problem you have two ways.
first is to pay money to use Apple authorized cloud with mac os machine on it.
second is to use virtual machine yourself.
second one is against apple tos, but i am not sure if it is in affect if you have mac os yourself.
Honestly wouldn't be surprised if it applied to him
You could use vscode over ssh which you can enable on macos in sharing settings under remote login and for building you can temporarily connect using vnc which is also support by macos without any setup needed in sharing options under remote managment and connect using realvnc or any other vnc client of your preference
are you suggesting that you'd ever leave apple's walled garden??