iphone - Is there a way to test my Xcode 7.2-compiled app with iOS 9.3?

Question

I have the iOS 9.3 beta installed on a testing device as I'm running a few 9.3-compiled apps, but I also have an old app that is compiled in Xcode 7.2. I can run the app on any iOS 9.2 device with ease, but if I try to run it on the one iOS 9.3 beta device, I get the "could not find Developer Disk Image" error.

Xcode 7.3 includes some updates to Swift, so I'd have to change a great deal of my files, and I just want to test to see if it's working fine. Is there any way to do this without having to change a lot of Swift code? It's on the App Store compiled for 9.2 and I can run it on my 9.3 device, so I don't understand why it's so difficult.

Answer 1

If you want to avoid the beta version of Xcode from potentially altering your original project, just make a copy of the project and then just open it up in the beta version. If you have an app running in Swift 2.1.1 (Xcode 7.2), the differences to Swift 2.2 (Xcode 7.3) are pretty modest. And if you do this with a copy, you can be confident that your original project won't be altered.

If you don't want to do that for some reason you can install apps from a production version of Xcode on a device running a beta version of iOS:

1. First, you want to make sure you have the profiles installed on your beta iOS device. The easiest way to do this is to run some "Hello World" app on your beta device from the beta Xcode. If prompted to add a team/profile onto your device, you should go ahead and do so, like usual.

2. Quit the beta Xcode and start the production Xcode and open the project for the app you want to install. Select "Generic iOS Device" where you choose the active scheme in jump bar and then build the app. You should then see the .app file (not in red) in the Products folder in the "Project Navigator" tree in the left panel.

3. Install the app on the device by opening the devices window (shift+command+2) and selecting the device in question. In the right panel (or top right panel if you're showing the console, too), you'll find a "Installed Apps" section. Just drag the .app file from the Products folder into this installed apps section.

   

Clearly, if you have other apps you want to install, you can just repeat steps 2 and 3 as appropriate.

There are a bunch of different ways to install an app on a device, but I find this is the easiest for one-off installs with a device sitting in front of me. You won't be able to debug if you do it this way, but you can at least fire it up, run it through its paces, watch the device console for any debugging messages you may be NSLog'ing, etc.