1 00:00:00,090 --> 00:00:03,630 Hey, thank you for joining me for today's episode with Kabir. 2 00:00:04,080 --> 00:00:06,600 Before we begin, I wanted to let you know what's new. 3 00:00:06,810 --> 00:00:07,799 Couple of things. 4 00:00:07,920 --> 00:00:11,610 I released a new library to write Swift code. 5 00:00:11,610 --> 00:00:15,389 So if you're somebody who's interested in making mac macros or any sort 6 00:00:15,389 --> 00:00:19,710 of dynamic code in Swift, you'll definitely wanna check out Syntax Kit. 7 00:00:20,130 --> 00:00:24,150 The link to that will be in the show notes you should consider. 8 00:00:24,795 --> 00:00:27,075 Subscribing to the newsletter 'cause that's free. 9 00:00:27,285 --> 00:00:29,235 But you should also consider being a Patreon. 10 00:00:29,565 --> 00:00:31,665 It's like three bucks right now per month. 11 00:00:32,305 --> 00:00:37,105 We already have the next episode posted on Patreon with Rachel Brindle, 12 00:00:37,105 --> 00:00:39,205 where we talk about Swift testing. 13 00:00:39,505 --> 00:00:42,295 So if you want early access to the next episode, you'll definitely 14 00:00:42,355 --> 00:00:46,745 want to make sure you join the Patreon, patreon.com/bright digit. 15 00:00:47,555 --> 00:00:48,695 And that's about it. 16 00:00:49,115 --> 00:00:50,645 I hope you enjoy today's episode. 17 00:00:53,906 --> 00:00:56,066 Welcome to another episode of Empower Apps. 18 00:00:56,066 --> 00:01:00,556 I'm your host, Leo dm. Today I'm joined by Kabir Oberai. 19 00:01:00,886 --> 00:01:02,921 Kabir Thank you so much for coming on the show. 20 00:01:03,782 --> 00:01:04,707 Thank you for having me. 21 00:01:05,651 --> 00:01:08,111 it's been a few exciting weeks for you, right? 22 00:01:08,141 --> 00:01:12,881 So not only do we have WWDC week, but you graduated, is that correct? 23 00:01:13,592 --> 00:01:14,907 That's good act last week. 24 00:01:15,431 --> 00:01:16,451 Congratulations. 25 00:01:16,451 --> 00:01:19,001 Welcome to the workforce in 2025. 26 00:01:19,751 --> 00:01:20,021 Yeah. 27 00:01:20,081 --> 00:01:23,501 So, before we begin, I'll let you go ahead and introduce yourself. 28 00:01:24,517 --> 00:01:24,937 Sorry. 29 00:01:24,997 --> 00:01:29,197 So I am, or I was a student at the University of Waloo. 30 00:01:29,467 --> 00:01:35,897 And I, you know, I just graduated, with a degree in computer science and, I've 31 00:01:35,897 --> 00:01:38,597 been interested in iOS development for. 32 00:01:39,322 --> 00:01:40,552 As long as I can remember. 33 00:01:41,042 --> 00:01:44,252 I started iOS in like 2013. 34 00:01:45,482 --> 00:01:49,682 just 'cause I wanted to make apps, iOS apps seemed pretty cool. 35 00:01:50,012 --> 00:01:53,582 And then I learned objective C and a year later, Swift came out and I was 36 00:01:53,582 --> 00:01:55,652 like, what did I do all of this for? 37 00:01:57,332 --> 00:02:02,442 But, you know, it was pretty I'm glad I learned objective C and, I'm 38 00:02:02,442 --> 00:02:04,092 glad that Swift came out as well. 39 00:02:04,202 --> 00:02:04,652 And. 40 00:02:04,942 --> 00:02:10,462 You know, I was A-W-W-D-C scholar in 2017 and I've developed some fun 41 00:02:10,462 --> 00:02:14,362 projects over the years, which I think we will be talking about soon. 42 00:02:16,132 --> 00:02:20,772 one other thing worth mentioning is I I've been in the 43 00:02:20,892 --> 00:02:22,782 workforce in and out for a bit. 44 00:02:22,882 --> 00:02:27,622 I was previously at texts.com, which is a startup. 45 00:02:27,722 --> 00:02:33,272 I, we got acquired by Automatic, the guys behind WordPress and Tumblr. 46 00:02:33,722 --> 00:02:39,682 And, then more recently I joined ramp which is a FinTech based in New York. 47 00:02:40,681 --> 00:02:41,011 Okay. 48 00:02:41,161 --> 00:02:41,791 Awesome. 49 00:02:42,091 --> 00:02:43,231 well, congratulations. 50 00:02:43,951 --> 00:02:48,091 We're gonna talk about what came outta WWDC and stuff like that. 51 00:02:48,661 --> 00:02:52,211 But we're also gonna talk about a little tool you've, made called xTool. 52 00:02:52,871 --> 00:02:56,851 Before we get into xTool, let it, let's jump back and do talk about wwdc. 53 00:02:56,851 --> 00:03:00,721 What were some things that you were particularly interested 54 00:03:00,721 --> 00:03:06,491 in or what were things that you were fascinated by, I guess. 55 00:03:07,947 --> 00:03:09,597 That was a bit, that was quite a bit. 56 00:03:09,667 --> 00:03:13,117 I think, you know, elephant in the room, the liquid glass stuff 57 00:03:13,207 --> 00:03:16,537 is, definitely very nice to see. 58 00:03:16,737 --> 00:03:18,177 I love the luminess. 59 00:03:18,277 --> 00:03:20,677 I, I love all the, you know, the. 60 00:03:21,002 --> 00:03:25,292 The move towards sort of skim to an extent? 61 00:03:26,702 --> 00:03:33,212 it's, yeah, it, it does definitely like make designing harder in my opinion. 62 00:03:33,362 --> 00:03:37,322 'Cause you know, I. There was this sweet spot of a few yours where you 63 00:03:37,322 --> 00:03:42,212 could just like whiteboard anything and like drop it in Figma and you'd 64 00:03:42,212 --> 00:03:46,532 have like a really nice iOS design, but now you have to think about all 65 00:03:46,532 --> 00:03:49,082 of these little effects and stuff. 66 00:03:49,132 --> 00:03:52,162 I do hope that we get, some good tools for that. 67 00:03:52,272 --> 00:03:57,282 But you know, designing it, Swift UI is also, pretty good approach to take. 68 00:03:57,352 --> 00:04:01,322 I'm excited by I'm pretty excited by the foundation model stuff as well. 69 00:04:01,742 --> 00:04:03,422 You had a chance to play around with it yet? 70 00:04:04,434 --> 00:04:10,874 not exactly, so I actually, I was poking around one of the excode betas a few 71 00:04:10,964 --> 00:04:16,934 months ago, so like, not the 26 cycle, but I think it was a 16 expert, 16 cycle. 72 00:04:17,384 --> 00:04:21,314 And I noticed this generative macro in. 73 00:04:22,019 --> 00:04:24,179 one of the excode 16 vaers. 74 00:04:24,192 --> 00:04:24,462 really? 75 00:04:24,692 --> 00:04:24,982 Okay. 76 00:04:25,959 --> 00:04:28,359 So that's when I poked around with it actually. 77 00:04:28,429 --> 00:04:31,939 I think it was entitlement gated at that point. 78 00:04:32,029 --> 00:04:34,369 Like I don't think it was like fully usable. 79 00:04:34,429 --> 00:04:38,209 'cause it also like pulled in, it was just the macros that 80 00:04:38,209 --> 00:04:39,619 they accidentally included. 81 00:04:39,807 --> 00:04:40,077 right. 82 00:04:40,939 --> 00:04:43,759 but, I was like, okay, this is. 83 00:04:44,029 --> 00:04:48,049 Definitely gonna lead to something interesting in 26. 84 00:04:48,962 --> 00:04:50,757 And, and, and we know that now. 85 00:04:50,762 --> 00:04:50,982 Yeah. 86 00:04:51,469 --> 00:04:51,919 yeah. 87 00:04:52,249 --> 00:04:52,639 Yeah. 88 00:04:52,969 --> 00:04:56,569 well, not 26 at the time we, one thought it would be 17. 89 00:04:56,629 --> 00:05:00,559 The release numbering is also an interesting change. 90 00:05:00,849 --> 00:05:02,079 It's definitely nice. 91 00:05:02,619 --> 00:05:05,754 I can't wait to see, I mean, I'm. 92 00:05:05,904 --> 00:05:09,804 The mess that's going to be created with the minor versioning though. 93 00:05:09,894 --> 00:05:13,944 'cause like, you know, you've solved the, the major versioning, but, 94 00:05:15,122 --> 00:05:17,042 What do you think they're gonna do with the minor versioning? 95 00:05:17,072 --> 00:05:22,172 I mean, I would just assume that we're gonna see 26 1, 26 2, and it's 96 00:05:22,172 --> 00:05:23,972 still gonna go the way it was before. 97 00:05:23,972 --> 00:05:24,062 Right. 98 00:05:24,842 --> 00:05:26,702 As opposed to like months or something. 99 00:05:26,702 --> 00:05:27,812 That would be really confusing. 100 00:05:28,022 --> 00:05:29,342 I mean, I don't know. 101 00:05:29,372 --> 00:05:32,552 I guess that's kind of what, what like Ubuntu does that right? 102 00:05:32,552 --> 00:05:34,052 So like it wouldn't be that 103 00:05:34,149 --> 00:05:38,529 hot take, my hot take is that, months would've actually, would 104 00:05:38,529 --> 00:05:40,509 actually be a nice approach to take. 105 00:05:41,079 --> 00:05:44,139 'Cause like if you're going to go with the calver approach, then 106 00:05:44,139 --> 00:05:45,609 just like go all in, you know? 107 00:05:45,617 --> 00:05:46,142 Yeah, yeah. 108 00:05:46,142 --> 00:05:46,472 Yeah. 109 00:05:46,682 --> 00:05:49,262 Actually it would be, 'cause like they do pretty much release 110 00:05:49,682 --> 00:05:52,652 26.1 in January, more or less so. 111 00:05:53,027 --> 00:05:54,317 It would kinda line up, 112 00:05:54,804 --> 00:05:55,524 That's true. 113 00:05:55,644 --> 00:05:56,304 That's true. 114 00:05:56,584 --> 00:06:00,484 And you know, the way that they talk about releases usually is like if you 115 00:06:00,484 --> 00:06:04,924 look at some of the Swift internal sources, they talk about like the fall 116 00:06:05,134 --> 00:06:09,094 2024 release or the spring 2024 release. 117 00:06:09,424 --> 00:06:11,224 So I do hope that they do that. 118 00:06:11,224 --> 00:06:12,844 If anyone from Apple is listening, 119 00:06:12,927 --> 00:06:13,887 Yeah, that actually 120 00:06:13,894 --> 00:06:14,529 not till late. 121 00:06:15,057 --> 00:06:15,417 Yeah. 122 00:06:16,497 --> 00:06:16,917 Cool. 123 00:06:16,917 --> 00:06:20,687 So let's talk about xTool. 124 00:06:20,992 --> 00:06:24,682 For those who don't know, I'll let you go ahead and explain exactly what it is. 125 00:06:25,829 --> 00:06:32,639 At the moment the main way to develop iOS apps or apps for Apple platforms is 126 00:06:32,639 --> 00:06:36,299 with Xcode, which is Apple's, IDE, and. 127 00:06:37,299 --> 00:06:40,839 You know, there's, there's a lot of benefits to Xcode of course, and you 128 00:06:40,839 --> 00:06:45,189 get your nice end-to-end vertical integration across Apple Stack. 129 00:06:45,999 --> 00:06:47,649 but there are issues with it, right? 130 00:06:47,759 --> 00:06:51,509 And, you know, anytime you have a bug, it's not open source. 131 00:06:51,569 --> 00:06:53,939 It's hard to fix any of that stuff. 132 00:06:54,329 --> 00:06:57,719 And sometimes you just need something more lightweight or sometimes 133 00:06:57,719 --> 00:07:02,139 you want to use do development on other platforms than macOS. 134 00:07:02,599 --> 00:07:02,839 And. 135 00:07:03,264 --> 00:07:05,704 This is a problem that xTool aims to solve. 136 00:07:06,574 --> 00:07:13,624 And, in essence, xTool is a re-implementation of a lot of what 137 00:07:13,624 --> 00:07:19,744 Xcode does in a way that's fully open source and works across platforms, 138 00:07:19,744 --> 00:07:25,119 which means you can build iOS apps on macOS, windows with Ws and Linux. 139 00:07:26,119 --> 00:07:29,629 Can you build anything in the Apple pla, any Apple platform? 140 00:07:31,000 --> 00:07:34,030 So the foundations for that are all in place. 141 00:07:34,150 --> 00:07:39,830 At the moment I am like the building step is primarily geared 142 00:07:39,830 --> 00:07:45,960 towards iOS stuff, but we actually do build the macOS SDK as well. 143 00:07:46,650 --> 00:07:50,040 And it, I don't think it would be a stretch for us to support 144 00:07:50,040 --> 00:07:51,900 building like Vision Os and, 145 00:07:52,314 --> 00:07:54,324 If you have the SDK, that's what you need, right? 146 00:07:54,690 --> 00:07:55,350 Exactly. 147 00:07:55,530 --> 00:08:00,820 It's the bit that isn't done yet for, like macOS for example, is the macOS 148 00:08:00,840 --> 00:08:05,070 app bundle structure is slightly different from the iOS bundle structure. 149 00:08:05,490 --> 00:08:09,330 So for us to build Mac apps, we just have to like move some 150 00:08:09,330 --> 00:08:10,920 files around in different ways. 151 00:08:11,030 --> 00:08:12,535 But it's not, it's not too hard. 152 00:08:12,875 --> 00:08:13,625 It's not too hard. 153 00:08:13,685 --> 00:08:16,685 I actually added, simulator support recently. 154 00:08:17,009 --> 00:08:17,189 That's 155 00:08:18,185 --> 00:08:21,755 yeah, so you can, you can build for the simulator with xTool, which 156 00:08:21,755 --> 00:08:25,730 is especially useful when you are developing with xTool on macOS. 157 00:08:26,370 --> 00:08:31,530 So what are some things that you had to learn to get this going? 158 00:08:31,530 --> 00:08:35,310 What are some fundamentals for getting Xcode working or 159 00:08:35,310 --> 00:08:36,840 I guess the bill tools working 160 00:08:37,087 --> 00:08:37,507 Yeah, 161 00:08:37,860 --> 00:08:39,000 in another os. 162 00:08:39,877 --> 00:08:46,357 I think, this really, really pushed my, like, the extent of my knowledge 163 00:08:46,417 --> 00:08:50,797 on iOS and also like, it's been an amazing learning experience for me. 164 00:08:51,247 --> 00:08:57,997 So a little bit of historic context here actually is, this started off as a project 165 00:08:58,047 --> 00:09:01,047 that I started building in around 2017. 166 00:09:02,757 --> 00:09:08,167 so, i, I was, you know, a, a part of the jailbreak community. 167 00:09:09,667 --> 00:09:14,617 and in the jailbreak community we had this build system called Theos. 168 00:09:14,987 --> 00:09:19,157 And this was the build system that allows you to build jailbreak tweaks. 169 00:09:20,372 --> 00:09:21,692 Amongst other things. 170 00:09:22,092 --> 00:09:24,552 And it was completely detached from Xcode. 171 00:09:24,842 --> 00:09:29,562 It was based around GNU make which if you've ever used make you can imagine 172 00:09:29,562 --> 00:09:31,332 is an absolute nightmare to deal with. 173 00:09:32,142 --> 00:09:38,802 But the crux of it is somehow through a lot of clue and, you know, batch work. 174 00:09:39,252 --> 00:09:44,832 This build system supported building iOS apps on any platform which is like. 175 00:09:45,037 --> 00:09:47,317 Even on like native windows. 176 00:09:47,377 --> 00:09:48,307 And on Linux. 177 00:09:48,417 --> 00:09:50,487 But it was specifically four J Big. 178 00:09:50,537 --> 00:09:53,537 'Cause these apps weren't, you know, there's this important step of code 179 00:09:53,537 --> 00:09:57,947 signing that you do with actual normal iOS apps that we weren't doing there. 180 00:09:58,367 --> 00:10:03,047 So long story short, I eventually became one of the core maintainers of Theos. 181 00:10:03,467 --> 00:10:06,527 And I learned a lot about how the plumbing works. 182 00:10:06,587 --> 00:10:08,057 I added Swift support to it. 183 00:10:08,177 --> 00:10:09,617 I added a bunch of other things to it. 184 00:10:10,157 --> 00:10:14,077 And then I. The one question that kept sort of ringing in the 185 00:10:14,077 --> 00:10:18,247 back of my head was, why is this not accessible to more people? 186 00:10:18,487 --> 00:10:22,147 You know, why, why is it that only people in the JFA community 187 00:10:22,567 --> 00:10:27,817 have the fortune of being able to develop iOS apps on any platform? 188 00:10:28,267 --> 00:10:33,097 And around the same time I was working on this other project called 189 00:10:33,097 --> 00:10:37,817 supercharge, which was basically designed around side loading. 190 00:10:37,817 --> 00:10:41,907 So being able to install iOS apps without going through the App store. 191 00:10:43,227 --> 00:10:43,317 and. 192 00:10:44,317 --> 00:10:45,127 Like this. 193 00:10:45,427 --> 00:10:49,657 So supercharge in the end there was, there were a lot of roadblocks and I 194 00:10:49,657 --> 00:10:55,867 kind of, decided to put a stop on it because I was just a bit worried about, 195 00:10:56,527 --> 00:10:59,197 you know, legal factors and other things. 196 00:10:59,205 --> 00:11:00,675 is, that is a consideration. 197 00:11:00,675 --> 00:11:01,095 Yes. 198 00:11:01,627 --> 00:11:02,887 it definitely is. 199 00:11:03,337 --> 00:11:07,477 But, I learned a lot from supercharge as well, including, and, and I. 200 00:11:08,197 --> 00:11:13,597 I developed a lot of code there that was able to interact with Apple's developer 201 00:11:13,597 --> 00:11:19,657 services and take any app and sign it, you know, provision it, get those certificates 202 00:11:19,657 --> 00:11:23,587 and profiles and all of those things that you need, and then sign it and 203 00:11:23,587 --> 00:11:25,987 then also install it onto your device. 204 00:11:26,377 --> 00:11:30,337 And, some of the things I had to learn along the way there, besides the 205 00:11:30,337 --> 00:11:34,837 interacting with the developer APIs was like to actually set to install it onto 206 00:11:34,837 --> 00:11:39,397 your device, we had to emulate the same protocol that Xcode uses when you hit 207 00:11:39,397 --> 00:11:41,857 Command R and you install over wifi. 208 00:11:42,457 --> 00:11:45,547 So yeah, lots of, you know, lots of learning there for sure. 209 00:11:46,147 --> 00:11:48,787 And, anyway. 210 00:11:49,527 --> 00:11:52,737 Eventually I realized I had these two pieces that were great. 211 00:11:52,767 --> 00:11:56,667 You know, you had this Theos thing that was able to build iOS apps but not 212 00:11:56,667 --> 00:11:59,637 install them onto a J non J broken device. 213 00:11:59,907 --> 00:12:02,337 And then you had this supercharge thing that was able to. 214 00:12:02,952 --> 00:12:05,472 Sign apps and install them onto any device. 215 00:12:05,832 --> 00:12:09,282 And I was like, I could take my learnings from here and I could take some of 216 00:12:09,282 --> 00:12:13,962 the code from here even and sort of combine it into this one project. 217 00:12:14,232 --> 00:12:18,192 The third piece and the final piece that really fit in place was 218 00:12:18,192 --> 00:12:22,632 when Swift improved their support for cross compilation with Swift 219 00:12:22,632 --> 00:12:24,762 Package Manager, Swift SDK support. 220 00:12:25,092 --> 00:12:29,352 So this is something that didn't really land into Swift six one or six two even. 221 00:12:29,435 --> 00:12:30,305 I was gonna ask. 222 00:12:30,777 --> 00:12:31,167 Yeah. 223 00:12:31,237 --> 00:12:35,427 It was just like last year basically where, you know, this w of a dc in 224 00:12:35,427 --> 00:12:39,417 fact, they, they made a big show of how you can now build web assembly 225 00:12:39,417 --> 00:12:41,427 apps natively with Swift, right? 226 00:12:41,657 --> 00:12:45,167 Even Android apps for that matter is something you can build with Swift now. 227 00:12:45,287 --> 00:12:45,707 And, 228 00:12:45,865 --> 00:12:46,885 done an episode on. 229 00:12:47,702 --> 00:12:48,992 Oh, you have, that's awesome. 230 00:12:49,102 --> 00:12:55,102 But yeah, you know, so like all of those pieces were incredibly relevant here 231 00:12:55,162 --> 00:13:02,512 because I was able to build a Swift SDK, like we use for building Android apps. 232 00:13:02,992 --> 00:13:07,762 But, this one can build iOS apps with Swift Package Manager. 233 00:13:09,052 --> 00:13:09,862 And yeah. 234 00:13:09,862 --> 00:13:13,492 So, you know, just combine all of those pieces and you get this end-to-end 235 00:13:13,492 --> 00:13:20,242 solution that can build, provision, sign and install an iOS app from any platform. 236 00:13:21,242 --> 00:13:26,102 So one of the things I think you mentioned was that there was like an open source. 237 00:13:26,492 --> 00:13:32,382 They had open source part of the build, Swift build, how it works with Xcode. 238 00:13:32,382 --> 00:13:34,272 Is that correct or am I missing something? 239 00:13:35,194 --> 00:13:39,754 So Swift Build actually came along fairly late in this whole process. 240 00:13:39,904 --> 00:13:44,224 And it's, it's confusing 'cause there's Swift build, which is like the Swift 241 00:13:44,224 --> 00:13:46,354 space build command that you use to build. 242 00:13:47,149 --> 00:13:47,809 With Swift Back 243 00:13:48,267 --> 00:13:48,567 It is 244 00:13:48,889 --> 00:13:50,869 you have Swift Hyphen Build, right? 245 00:13:51,229 --> 00:13:53,389 So Swift Hyphen Build is the Excode thing. 246 00:13:53,719 --> 00:13:56,569 And yeah, that, that has been open sourced fairly recently. 247 00:13:56,809 --> 00:13:59,839 I actually built all of this way before Swift Build came around. 248 00:14:00,739 --> 00:14:05,239 I. But I am looking into using Swift build to streamline most of 249 00:14:05,239 --> 00:14:09,049 this build process, and it's gonna have a huge impact here for sure. 250 00:14:09,289 --> 00:14:10,219 At some point. 251 00:14:10,699 --> 00:14:14,889 It's actually like Swift Package Manager is currently working on integrating 252 00:14:14,889 --> 00:14:17,199 Swift Build as their native build system. 253 00:14:17,559 --> 00:14:19,560 And once that happens I am. 254 00:14:19,979 --> 00:14:23,339 We are gonna have some benefits from that immediately. 255 00:14:23,339 --> 00:14:28,019 And then, you know, we are also gonna be able to probably use that with X two to 256 00:14:28,019 --> 00:14:30,359 remove some of the manual packaging code 257 00:14:30,517 --> 00:14:31,507 Right, right, right. 258 00:14:31,747 --> 00:14:36,697 So what's, what is the difference between Swift Space build and Swift Build? 259 00:14:37,619 --> 00:14:41,799 Swift space build is Swift package managers build command. 260 00:14:41,799 --> 00:14:42,069 Right? 261 00:14:42,399 --> 00:14:46,509 And until last year it was entirely like. 262 00:14:47,379 --> 00:14:48,099 Custom. 263 00:14:49,239 --> 00:14:55,239 it did its own, you know, coordination with the underlying Swift compiler. 264 00:14:56,979 --> 00:15:01,479 in fact, it now uses Swift dashboard under the hood, 265 00:15:01,667 --> 00:15:06,197 For starting with Swift 6.1, 266 00:15:07,059 --> 00:15:08,199 Six two. 267 00:15:08,299 --> 00:15:13,189 And I say it uses it, but that's with an asterisk where it's an option that 268 00:15:13,189 --> 00:15:15,079 you can provide to make it use it. 269 00:15:15,679 --> 00:15:16,009 That's good 270 00:15:16,090 --> 00:15:20,290 Yeah, so you can actually like test it out now, but I think, it's probably 271 00:15:20,290 --> 00:15:24,510 not going to be stable until I, I don't know after this timelines here, 272 00:15:25,044 --> 00:15:25,764 Right, right. 273 00:15:26,250 --> 00:15:26,580 yeah. 274 00:15:26,934 --> 00:15:31,134 It's funny you were mentioning, jailbreaking and stuff because I 275 00:15:31,134 --> 00:15:36,864 recently read an article about the Hack OSH community and how they're 276 00:15:36,864 --> 00:15:43,314 kind of, now that we know, tahoe 26 will be the last Intel supported Mac. 277 00:15:43,374 --> 00:15:48,684 They're pretty much shutting down now because that was a big opening was 278 00:15:48,684 --> 00:15:51,504 to be able to build for Intel, right. 279 00:15:51,654 --> 00:15:52,644 And do it on Intel. 280 00:15:52,974 --> 00:15:55,374 So it's funny you're imagining now we can do. 281 00:15:55,779 --> 00:15:58,689 Build on Linux and Windows as well. 282 00:15:58,899 --> 00:16:03,239 To me, like what really attracts me to xTool is the CI option. 283 00:16:03,869 --> 00:16:10,139 If anybody knows it's cheaper to run a Linux vm, than it is to run a Mac vm. 284 00:16:10,769 --> 00:16:15,759 And so being able to do that would be absolutely, you know, fantastic 285 00:16:15,759 --> 00:16:18,699 for the community just to get the builds going and running. 286 00:16:19,339 --> 00:16:23,869 I just wanna interject that real quick and I do wanna mention that 287 00:16:23,899 --> 00:16:27,739 with regards to the CI option, that's something I have been doing 288 00:16:27,739 --> 00:16:29,749 a lot of research into recently. 289 00:16:30,079 --> 00:16:34,489 I think the main blocker that is actually legal rather than technical. 290 00:16:34,734 --> 00:16:39,994 Now that xTool exists, that isn't any technical blocker, but there might be a 291 00:16:39,994 --> 00:16:45,854 potential legal blocker, which is that, apple doesn't the, you know, the license 292 00:16:45,854 --> 00:16:49,844 agreement asks that you use macOS to 293 00:16:49,952 --> 00:16:49,982 Okay. 294 00:16:50,629 --> 00:16:51,329 deploy apps. 295 00:16:51,974 --> 00:16:54,209 So yeah, the way that, you know, I've been. 296 00:16:54,669 --> 00:16:58,689 Talking about xTool is, yeah, we support Linux, we support 297 00:16:58,689 --> 00:17:00,379 Windows, we support macOS. 298 00:17:00,729 --> 00:17:04,989 But as far as the license agreement goes, it does say you 299 00:17:04,989 --> 00:17:06,519 should be using Apple hardware. 300 00:17:06,789 --> 00:17:11,769 So like, I've been using it within like, dock on macOS or even 301 00:17:11,769 --> 00:17:13,389 the new containerization stuff. 302 00:17:13,419 --> 00:17:15,609 I actually wanna give that a spin soon. 303 00:17:16,089 --> 00:17:19,354 And that, that's another thing I'm very excited about with this dub. 304 00:17:19,774 --> 00:17:23,594 But, you know, I've been using it in a VM as well. 305 00:17:23,834 --> 00:17:27,494 There's like, the rest of it is kind of open to legal interpretation. 306 00:17:27,834 --> 00:17:29,324 I'm not a lawyer yeah. 307 00:17:30,944 --> 00:17:34,954 but it's very interesting and I have actually, I do actually 308 00:17:34,954 --> 00:17:40,204 know that it is possible to use this on CI on a Linux CI machine. 309 00:17:41,029 --> 00:17:43,879 just gotta figure out whether it, the law allows it. 310 00:17:44,102 --> 00:17:44,792 right, right. 311 00:17:44,822 --> 00:17:45,302 Exactly. 312 00:17:45,302 --> 00:17:45,962 Exactly. 313 00:17:46,502 --> 00:17:50,192 So how, what's the difference? 314 00:17:50,292 --> 00:17:56,412 What goes into building an app, as opposed to like building a Swift 315 00:17:56,412 --> 00:17:58,122 package where you just compile Swift? 316 00:17:58,552 --> 00:18:02,712 What are the components of building an app that are required or that you learned 317 00:18:03,272 --> 00:18:04,652 that is going on in the background? 318 00:18:04,652 --> 00:18:07,732 When you build an Xcode, you build an iOS app. 319 00:18:08,879 --> 00:18:13,249 So when you build an iOS app, in fact, you can actually let's start with macros here. 320 00:18:13,309 --> 00:18:14,989 'cause that's the easy option. 321 00:18:15,019 --> 00:18:19,849 If you build a macros executable, you know, these days you use like 322 00:18:19,849 --> 00:18:22,279 your admin to mark the entry point. 323 00:18:22,819 --> 00:18:28,999 If you import Swift UI in a macOS executable and you like declare your 324 00:18:28,999 --> 00:18:34,549 main thing to be an app, like the app protocol, you can build a macOS app. 325 00:18:34,799 --> 00:18:38,094 You, you can turn any plain executable into a macOS app. 326 00:18:39,699 --> 00:18:44,319 Yeah, so, so like the bare minimum there is actually very little, like 327 00:18:44,409 --> 00:18:49,279 you just, you know, need to import Swift ui or UI kit or app kit. 328 00:18:49,369 --> 00:18:56,309 And then Mark the, either your app Delicate or your app protocol with admin. 329 00:18:56,759 --> 00:18:58,079 The, the, the. 330 00:18:58,589 --> 00:19:02,219 Bit that really matters after that is the bundling bit. 331 00:19:02,429 --> 00:19:05,799 So once you have an executable you can run it on macOS and you 332 00:19:05,799 --> 00:19:07,749 can distribute a plain executable. 333 00:19:07,899 --> 00:19:11,079 But that doesn't work on iOS, of course. 334 00:19:11,179 --> 00:19:15,529 On iOS or if you wanna do anything fancy on macOS, right? 335 00:19:15,534 --> 00:19:16,849 What you need is this bundle. 336 00:19:17,299 --> 00:19:23,089 And if you, if you look@any.app under the hood, like you go to any of the 337 00:19:23,172 --> 00:19:24,852 It's just basically a folder. 338 00:19:25,069 --> 00:19:25,579 Exactly. 339 00:19:25,579 --> 00:19:27,259 It's a folder just called our app. 340 00:19:27,349 --> 00:19:30,739 And then it has like a few directories inside it, and then 341 00:19:30,979 --> 00:19:34,369 one of those files inside it is that executable that you built. 342 00:19:34,669 --> 00:19:34,939 Right. 343 00:19:36,499 --> 00:19:41,389 and then the other things that are there are, you have an info P list, which you. 344 00:19:42,334 --> 00:19:46,734 Most people have seen as well is just like, it declares important things that 345 00:19:46,734 --> 00:19:48,234 the system should know about the app. 346 00:19:48,774 --> 00:19:50,364 And then you have your signing. 347 00:19:50,394 --> 00:19:54,024 And signing is actually the, the trickiest bit of this. 348 00:19:54,114 --> 00:19:57,894 When it comes to iOS on macOS, you can like pseudo sign, 349 00:19:57,894 --> 00:20:00,024 which is very easy to do. 350 00:20:00,144 --> 00:20:06,084 On iOS you need to have like a valid code signature, which basically proves 351 00:20:06,084 --> 00:20:12,204 that you are a specific developer and proves that Apple has given you 352 00:20:12,204 --> 00:20:15,774 permission to run this app on your device. 353 00:20:17,109 --> 00:20:20,779 So when you run an app and you run into signing errors or you see that 354 00:20:20,779 --> 00:20:24,779 your app is trying to be provisioned or like is generating certificates 355 00:20:24,779 --> 00:20:29,009 or, you know, whatnot that's kind of what's going on under the hood there. 356 00:20:29,459 --> 00:20:35,279 So, in essence, The steps here are basically you build your main 357 00:20:35,279 --> 00:20:39,329 executable, and this can be done with, you know, Swift Package Manager. 358 00:20:39,719 --> 00:20:42,659 You just need to have your target with at main in it. 359 00:20:42,899 --> 00:20:47,339 And then you need to bundle it in this folder with the info p list next to it. 360 00:20:47,669 --> 00:20:53,779 And, the other thing you need that is you need, to generate your 361 00:20:53,779 --> 00:20:57,829 provisioning profile, which is the sort of permission slip from Apple that 362 00:20:57,829 --> 00:20:59,899 says this app can run on this device. 363 00:21:00,279 --> 00:21:03,699 And you sign your app and you include that provisioning profile. 364 00:21:04,199 --> 00:21:06,539 And then you've got a fully functioning iOS app. 365 00:21:06,809 --> 00:21:08,429 In fact that's a.app. 366 00:21:08,519 --> 00:21:13,469 And then you also often distribute apps on IOS's IPA files. 367 00:21:13,799 --> 00:21:17,159 And IPA file is actually just a.app, but then. 368 00:21:17,279 --> 00:21:18,329 Compressed as a 369 00:21:18,427 --> 00:21:19,507 Yeah, exactly. 370 00:21:20,437 --> 00:21:21,217 That makes sense. 371 00:21:21,317 --> 00:21:26,297 What are, just before we touch on debugging and deployment, I do wanna 372 00:21:26,297 --> 00:21:30,467 see was there anything else that caught your interest, that you thought was 373 00:21:30,467 --> 00:21:35,547 interesting about the development process that you didn't, that you learned about? 374 00:21:35,807 --> 00:21:37,487 And in the process of making xTool. 375 00:21:39,897 --> 00:21:43,092 I think, one of the other very interesting things. 376 00:21:43,727 --> 00:21:48,407 Is that, the app store connect API is a gem. 377 00:21:48,587 --> 00:21:49,607 And I found it 378 00:21:49,630 --> 00:21:51,310 You mean not related to Ruby? 379 00:21:51,310 --> 00:21:53,210 You just mean it's, you really like it, right? 380 00:21:53,247 --> 00:21:53,487 yeah, 381 00:21:53,660 --> 00:21:53,960 Okay. 382 00:21:54,897 --> 00:21:58,197 no, that was an unintentional pun, but I'm gonna pretend like I meant it. 383 00:21:59,197 --> 00:22:01,657 have you looked at tools like Fastlane? 384 00:22:02,399 --> 00:22:07,639 Yeah, I actually, so, so I did a talk about this about the sort 385 00:22:07,639 --> 00:22:12,859 of roots of this project two years ago at this, at Swift do. 386 00:22:13,377 --> 00:22:13,467 Okay. 387 00:22:14,659 --> 00:22:19,539 and, that so that talk was just about like, here's the rudimentary 388 00:22:19,539 --> 00:22:20,769 things that we're working on. 389 00:22:20,769 --> 00:22:22,719 Here's a sneak peek into the future. 390 00:22:22,929 --> 00:22:26,139 It was a talk about iOS development or, or just like. 391 00:22:26,754 --> 00:22:31,014 The life of Swift outside of Xcode, which included cross-platform things. 392 00:22:31,264 --> 00:22:34,534 It's amazing to see how things have matured over these two years. 393 00:22:34,634 --> 00:22:37,514 Also like, you know, some things are still holding us back, but, 394 00:22:38,174 --> 00:22:41,294 you know, there's, in, in general there's a lot of progress here. 395 00:22:41,534 --> 00:22:44,294 But, you know, so, so like. 396 00:22:44,669 --> 00:22:50,389 I actually did speak to Josh Holtz at that, after that doc he was at Swift D 397 00:22:50,659 --> 00:22:52,969 and he's the maintainer, the Fastlane. 398 00:22:53,329 --> 00:22:58,989 And he was super excited about, everything that this could do for Fastlane. 399 00:22:59,529 --> 00:23:02,199 So, you know, we have, we have an open GitHub issue on 400 00:23:02,199 --> 00:23:03,939 both xTool and on Fastlane. 401 00:23:04,039 --> 00:23:08,929 To Jack this, and I haven't quite figured out what this integration looks like yet. 402 00:23:09,559 --> 00:23:15,679 And I haven't spoken to Josh about it recently, but, I would definitely 403 00:23:15,679 --> 00:23:17,719 love for that to happen at some point. 404 00:23:17,799 --> 00:23:22,149 It sounds like you're touching on some of the same stuff with signing and all that, 405 00:23:22,249 --> 00:23:25,399 In fact, like there were a lot of times that I had like bugs that 406 00:23:25,399 --> 00:23:28,039 I was trying to solve and I would just pop up and fastly and be like, 407 00:23:28,069 --> 00:23:29,719 oh, so that's how they fix that. 408 00:23:30,252 --> 00:23:32,612 and they fixed a lot of bugs yeah. 409 00:23:33,872 --> 00:23:34,202 yeah. 410 00:23:34,232 --> 00:23:34,587 Very cool. 411 00:23:34,887 --> 00:23:39,747 So one of the, the other thing I wanted to mention was the way, so when I got started 412 00:23:39,777 --> 00:23:41,967 using xTool, there was a specific way. 413 00:23:43,017 --> 00:23:44,367 The project was set up. 414 00:23:44,367 --> 00:23:46,227 You don't have like an Xcode project. 415 00:23:46,284 --> 00:23:49,694 And explain how that works exactly and why it's different from using 416 00:23:49,694 --> 00:23:51,284 just a regular Xcode project. 417 00:23:52,145 --> 00:23:56,285 So there's a trend recently, and it's not just me doing this. 418 00:23:56,355 --> 00:23:59,835 There's a lot of folks who are starting to realize that like expert 419 00:23:59,835 --> 00:24:01,935 projects have a host of issues. 420 00:24:02,475 --> 00:24:05,715 You know, like if you've ever had to deal with a merge conflict with an 421 00:24:05,715 --> 00:24:08,635 Xcode project it's a nightmare, right? 422 00:24:08,735 --> 00:24:09,575 You don't know what to do. 423 00:24:09,685 --> 00:24:13,495 'Cause like it's all, the Xcode project is all XML and it's just a 424 00:24:13,495 --> 00:24:16,015 blob of like autogenerated stuff. 425 00:24:17,335 --> 00:24:21,235 so there's a lot of, there, there's this huge push that people are making 426 00:24:21,235 --> 00:24:25,165 towards declarative package management or declarative project management. 427 00:24:25,690 --> 00:24:28,700 And there's some other great you know, folks who are doing this. 428 00:24:28,700 --> 00:24:32,290 If you've seen Xcode Gen or if you've seen tourist. 429 00:24:32,290 --> 00:24:33,040 Yes. 430 00:24:33,460 --> 00:24:36,520 I actually had a really nice conversation with the tourist, 431 00:24:37,270 --> 00:24:40,150 folks few weeks ago after ExTool. 432 00:24:40,520 --> 00:24:44,510 And we've also been talking about various ways that, you know, we 433 00:24:44,510 --> 00:24:46,130 can integrate things together. 434 00:24:46,500 --> 00:24:52,420 As a big fan of xTool or tourist yeah, I would love for the things to kind of 435 00:24:52,420 --> 00:24:55,690 be on the same page 'cause I'm starting to move all my projects to tourist. 436 00:24:56,602 --> 00:24:56,962 Yeah. 437 00:24:56,962 --> 00:24:58,792 Like that's, that's the dream, right? 438 00:24:58,912 --> 00:25:01,192 Ideally it would be amazing if you could take it to its 439 00:25:01,192 --> 00:25:03,112 project and just build it with x. 440 00:25:03,585 --> 00:25:04,030 Yeah, exactly. 441 00:25:04,252 --> 00:25:08,572 So yeah, the idea there is basically like, let's move away from having this 442 00:25:08,572 --> 00:25:13,562 expert project this massive expert project file as the source of truth 443 00:25:14,042 --> 00:25:18,902 and use declarative package management with like the Swift project manifest. 444 00:25:18,902 --> 00:25:23,402 That's very similar to package Swift that you use for Swift packages, right? 445 00:25:23,792 --> 00:25:27,602 Kind of what you're adding on top of your package Swift is you're adding 446 00:25:27,632 --> 00:25:29,822 instructions on what the app looks like. 447 00:25:30,032 --> 00:25:33,932 Just for starters, you need a bundle ID for it, and you need 448 00:25:33,932 --> 00:25:35,852 to select a development team. 449 00:25:36,182 --> 00:25:39,232 And then there's a few other things there, like, different capabilities 450 00:25:39,232 --> 00:25:44,992 your app might have, you know, like background modes, or like entitlements, 451 00:25:44,992 --> 00:25:46,012 all of those things, right? 452 00:25:46,762 --> 00:25:50,952 So as a matter of fact you might have noticed recently that even Apple 453 00:25:50,952 --> 00:25:52,602 is moving in the same direction. 454 00:25:53,082 --> 00:25:56,992 Where if you look at Swift Playgrounds they actually did something very 455 00:25:56,992 --> 00:26:02,572 similar where they have this library called Apple Product Types, and you can 456 00:26:02,572 --> 00:26:09,052 declare within your Swift package or dot iOS app, using Swift Playgrounds. 457 00:26:09,512 --> 00:26:13,112 You know, I realized that this was the direction we were moving and this was 458 00:26:13,112 --> 00:26:15,212 the best direction to take xTool as well. 459 00:26:15,782 --> 00:26:20,942 For starters, at the moment, you have this, so, so an xTool project 460 00:26:20,942 --> 00:26:25,382 is basically a package Swift, you know, it's a General Swift package. 461 00:26:25,482 --> 00:26:28,842 And then the only thing you add to it is this xTool, YAML file. 462 00:26:29,382 --> 00:26:32,892 And this just all you need to begin with is a bundle id. 463 00:26:33,102 --> 00:26:36,672 And, you know, when you run X to Dev, it figures out the rest. 464 00:26:37,052 --> 00:26:42,472 It takes your package, it tries to scan it for the iOS app target 465 00:26:42,472 --> 00:26:46,312 that it thinks will be the Root app project, the root app target. 466 00:26:46,702 --> 00:26:50,962 It'll build it for you and then it'll package it based on what you've given you, 467 00:26:51,052 --> 00:26:53,512 what you've given in, in the xTool Y file. 468 00:26:54,270 --> 00:26:57,045 How about things like the product type and things like that? 469 00:26:57,135 --> 00:26:59,085 That would just be done in the Swift package. 470 00:27:00,417 --> 00:27:03,807 So when you say product type, do you mean like ex app 471 00:27:03,807 --> 00:27:06,507 extensions or do you mean Okay. 472 00:27:06,777 --> 00:27:07,017 App 473 00:27:07,250 --> 00:27:11,805 type platform, things like that, that need to be set within a typical 474 00:27:12,027 --> 00:27:12,297 Yeah. 475 00:27:12,327 --> 00:27:15,967 So some of these things we try to get outta the package at Swift. 476 00:27:16,017 --> 00:27:19,797 For example, like if you wanna select like a deployment target that is 477 00:27:19,797 --> 00:27:25,267 actually you, you just use the platform's field in package Swift it's, you 478 00:27:25,267 --> 00:27:28,537 know, we, we dump the package Swift, we scan it, and we figure out the 479 00:27:28,537 --> 00:27:30,247 right deployment target to use that. 480 00:27:30,727 --> 00:27:34,777 But there's some things that, you can't quite do in Packet Swift. 481 00:27:34,777 --> 00:27:36,127 So like product types, right? 482 00:27:36,177 --> 00:27:39,737 There's no way to declare an like a keyboard extension or a share 483 00:27:39,737 --> 00:27:41,747 extension inside of a Swift package. 484 00:27:43,127 --> 00:27:47,717 and app extensions are one of the areas that we're actively working on right now. 485 00:27:47,837 --> 00:27:50,297 There was actually someone from the community who contributed a PI 486 00:27:50,297 --> 00:27:53,417 for this, which is amazing to see. 487 00:27:53,477 --> 00:27:56,957 You know, this is just a few weeks into Swift, into being released. 488 00:27:57,317 --> 00:27:58,337 And someone built out. 489 00:27:58,337 --> 00:28:00,492 All of app extension support for us. 490 00:28:00,592 --> 00:28:04,702 And I've been working with them on polishing that up and planning. 491 00:28:04,792 --> 00:28:06,112 I'm planning to land that soon. 492 00:28:06,532 --> 00:28:10,372 But, yeah, this was, this is something that you add to your xTool YAML 493 00:28:10,372 --> 00:28:13,102 file where you say, here is the. 494 00:28:13,357 --> 00:28:16,657 Swift package product that corresponds to your main app. 495 00:28:16,987 --> 00:28:19,927 And here are the Swift package products that correspond to 496 00:28:19,927 --> 00:28:21,457 different app extensions. 497 00:28:21,817 --> 00:28:23,887 And that's basically all you need to do there. 498 00:28:24,097 --> 00:28:28,967 And then when you do extra dev after that, it'll bundle all of those things together. 499 00:28:28,967 --> 00:28:31,637 It'll build all of those products and then better them for you. 500 00:28:32,085 --> 00:28:32,475 Okay. 501 00:28:32,685 --> 00:28:35,055 And then what did you say about what platforms? 502 00:28:35,265 --> 00:28:37,665 Does it just use deployment target for that or what? 503 00:28:38,602 --> 00:28:43,482 So at the moment it's more like, it's based on what command line 504 00:28:43,482 --> 00:28:45,072 flags you pass to external dev. 505 00:28:45,155 --> 00:28:45,755 Oh, okay. 506 00:28:45,905 --> 00:28:46,235 There we go. 507 00:28:46,962 --> 00:28:50,922 yeah, so, so right now it just assumes iOS by default. 508 00:28:51,182 --> 00:28:57,167 Like iPhoneOS SDK if you wanna build for the simulator, there's just a. 509 00:28:57,642 --> 00:29:00,042 Dash simulator flat that you pass. 510 00:29:00,552 --> 00:29:05,352 And, I realized that's designing me into a corner when it comes to other 511 00:29:05,352 --> 00:29:08,152 simulator types or other platform types. 512 00:29:08,212 --> 00:29:11,812 But, you know, right now we're just starting with iOS 513 00:29:11,812 --> 00:29:13,312 support to keep things simple. 514 00:29:13,432 --> 00:29:19,997 But you know, if we wanna do watchOS, visionOS, tvOS, macOS all of those things. 515 00:29:20,057 --> 00:29:23,297 You can, we'll probably just add a flag that you can pass in. 516 00:29:23,575 --> 00:29:24,265 that makes sense. 517 00:29:24,925 --> 00:29:29,715 One of the things that is really cool is so not only do you 518 00:29:29,715 --> 00:29:31,815 support not only do you support. 519 00:29:32,815 --> 00:29:38,835 Simulator, but you can build on device and deploy on device and debug on device, 520 00:29:39,435 --> 00:29:43,815 and it uses, remind me what the name of the tool is that you have to install. 521 00:29:44,032 --> 00:29:46,597 So, there's a tool called Lib iMobile 522 00:29:47,055 --> 00:29:51,015 Yeah, so explain how like the whole USB thing works on Linux and 523 00:29:51,015 --> 00:29:52,185 how you're getting that to work. 524 00:29:52,185 --> 00:29:54,945 So you can debug an app on device. 525 00:29:55,837 --> 00:29:59,647 So I will add, just to preface that debugging in particular 526 00:29:59,647 --> 00:30:01,237 is one of the trickier areas. 527 00:30:01,237 --> 00:30:05,167 There's actually been some major changes to Apple's debugging stack 528 00:30:05,167 --> 00:30:06,517 over the last one or two years. 529 00:30:07,297 --> 00:30:09,607 So as if iOS 17 it. 530 00:30:09,967 --> 00:30:13,357 Is something that doesn't work with xTool, but you can 531 00:30:13,357 --> 00:30:15,477 install apps, onto your device. 532 00:30:15,787 --> 00:30:19,667 And before that up until I was 16, it's really possible to 533 00:30:20,267 --> 00:30:22,037 launch and debug apps as well. 534 00:30:22,087 --> 00:30:25,547 And again, this is something that we're working on, it's that there's other 535 00:30:25,547 --> 00:30:27,107 third party tools that have solved this. 536 00:30:27,107 --> 00:30:30,547 But to come back to, you know, the crux of this, which is how do we 537 00:30:30,547 --> 00:30:32,407 do installation in the first place? 538 00:30:32,717 --> 00:30:37,577 Again, a huge part of this is basically emulating, what Xcode does. 539 00:30:37,967 --> 00:30:41,687 And when you connect your device via USB it actually opens up 540 00:30:41,687 --> 00:30:43,967 a port on your iOS device. 541 00:30:44,005 --> 00:30:44,305 That makes 542 00:30:45,467 --> 00:30:48,197 and, it creates like this tunnel. 543 00:30:48,337 --> 00:30:52,347 And it basically talks to it over, you know, dCP. 544 00:30:52,557 --> 00:30:58,207 So there's this protocol called, lockdown D and the way the lockdown 545 00:30:58,207 --> 00:31:04,267 D works is you send over from your Mac, you basically connect to this 546 00:31:04,567 --> 00:31:08,897 particular port on your device, and you send over this buddy, which is. 547 00:31:09,692 --> 00:31:14,102 You ask it to open a service, and there's a list of services 548 00:31:14,102 --> 00:31:16,502 that, lockdown d supports. 549 00:31:16,722 --> 00:31:22,382 For example, there's a service called apple File Conduit A FC and 550 00:31:22,412 --> 00:31:26,532 that allows you to transfer files between your Mac and your phone. 551 00:31:26,952 --> 00:31:30,252 So, you know, we first open up an Apple file conduit service. 552 00:31:30,462 --> 00:31:33,162 We transferred over the, IPA file. 553 00:31:33,592 --> 00:31:35,992 there's another service called Installation Proxy. 554 00:31:36,482 --> 00:31:38,912 We open that up and then we point it to the file that we 555 00:31:38,912 --> 00:31:42,782 install, that we just transferred over, and we say, install this. 556 00:31:43,052 --> 00:31:46,222 And, that in, in the gist of it is. 557 00:31:46,762 --> 00:31:49,522 Basically what we do, there's a lot of other work that of 558 00:31:49,522 --> 00:31:50,782 course, in terms of pairing. 559 00:31:50,992 --> 00:31:54,262 You know, there's like pairing is all SSL stuff. 560 00:31:54,362 --> 00:31:58,682 But, A lot of this work is handled by Lib I mobile device. 561 00:31:58,762 --> 00:32:04,852 And in fact, if you have a Linux machine and, you ever connect your phone, your 562 00:32:04,852 --> 00:32:08,302 iPhone, to a Linux machine and you see like your phone pop up on that, 563 00:32:09,022 --> 00:32:12,592 the reason that your Linux machine can talk to your iPhone is because Lib I 564 00:32:12,592 --> 00:32:14,422 Mobile device is installed by default. 565 00:32:14,520 --> 00:32:14,870 Right. 566 00:32:15,020 --> 00:32:15,310 Okay. 567 00:32:16,207 --> 00:32:20,842 so it's one of the, it is a very well maintained package and it's well tested. 568 00:32:20,992 --> 00:32:23,452 It is written in C which is unfortunate. 569 00:32:24,365 --> 00:32:25,925 What's most of this stuff written in? 570 00:32:25,925 --> 00:32:31,295 Is it written in c plus or what do you use or Swift or what 571 00:32:31,882 --> 00:32:35,772 So Lib iMobile device, and some of the dependencies that we have are 572 00:32:35,772 --> 00:32:42,792 written in C but, all of, xTool itself is written in Swift, in fact, yeah. 573 00:32:42,792 --> 00:32:48,492 So it's like pure Swift and like a little bit of like c to bridge 574 00:32:48,492 --> 00:32:50,232 between some of these things. 575 00:32:50,332 --> 00:32:53,212 How has the bridging been between C and Swift? 576 00:32:53,902 --> 00:32:58,192 And is anything with like Xcode six two help or Xcode six two 577 00:32:58,662 --> 00:33:01,902 Swift 6.2, has that helped at all? 578 00:33:02,854 --> 00:33:04,419 do you mean the c plus ended up, 579 00:33:04,487 --> 00:33:07,677 Yeah, sorry, c plus and the fact that we now have in was it 580 00:33:07,677 --> 00:33:09,597 inline array and span and stuff? 581 00:33:10,489 --> 00:33:10,639 Oh, right. 582 00:33:10,819 --> 00:33:14,569 I haven't used any of the new stuff, the inline and span stuff. 583 00:33:15,204 --> 00:33:17,929 'cause we're still trying to support six one and six zero. 584 00:33:18,169 --> 00:33:21,499 For like building, but I am very excited about that. 585 00:33:21,709 --> 00:33:24,259 The bridging in general has been pretty nice actually. 586 00:33:24,429 --> 00:33:27,729 As part of ex two, the way that we talked it, the way that we interact 587 00:33:27,729 --> 00:33:32,229 with Lib iMobile device is I built this library called Swifty Mobile device. 588 00:33:32,679 --> 00:33:37,389 And it's basically just a Swift apple around lib I mobile device. 589 00:33:37,719 --> 00:33:41,469 And you know, we have like some actors in there to allow for 590 00:33:41,469 --> 00:33:43,299 like nice skin currency stuff. 591 00:33:43,639 --> 00:33:50,089 I think, one of the biggest nightmares for us, for me was really like when, 592 00:33:50,569 --> 00:33:55,119 Swift six came about and then Swift like had the whole strict concurrency mode. 593 00:33:55,719 --> 00:33:57,729 And just dealing with concurrency errors. 594 00:33:58,849 --> 00:34:03,649 And all of the trash that's come around with, you know, like every single release. 595 00:34:03,649 --> 00:34:07,679 Having new concurrency errors to deal with has been a bit difficult, 596 00:34:07,769 --> 00:34:10,319 but, I have actually fixed some. 597 00:34:10,959 --> 00:34:13,449 Completely valid race conditions because of it. 598 00:34:13,449 --> 00:34:18,549 So I will say it, it's like you gotta eat your medicine to an extent that, 599 00:34:18,969 --> 00:34:22,509 that a ways the medicine could have been made nicer, but I think they're 600 00:34:22,509 --> 00:34:24,159 moving in the right direction now. 601 00:34:24,609 --> 00:34:29,369 And with bridging in general, x ft. Mobile device was also treat to work on. 602 00:34:29,439 --> 00:34:34,074 fact, I released, I shared Swifty mobile device with some folks a 603 00:34:34,074 --> 00:34:39,474 while ago, and I believe at the moment it's currently used with, if 604 00:34:39,474 --> 00:34:42,454 you've seen, Gui Rambo's AirBuddy. 605 00:34:42,664 --> 00:34:45,304 so that uses Swifty mobile device under the hood, or it 606 00:34:45,304 --> 00:34:47,044 used to for a bit at least. 607 00:34:47,354 --> 00:34:50,354 And another really nice tool called re incubate camo. 608 00:34:51,014 --> 00:34:54,334 And, That is something that's existed for a few years and 609 00:34:54,334 --> 00:34:57,904 is, in fact, it was featured by Apple recently, which is awesome. 610 00:34:58,354 --> 00:35:00,924 So that also uses Swifty mobile device. 611 00:35:00,934 --> 00:35:06,424 You know, it's, it's a, you know, validated library to that extent. 612 00:35:06,424 --> 00:35:08,554 And Bridging has been very nice to work with. 613 00:35:09,607 --> 00:35:10,627 So two things. 614 00:35:10,687 --> 00:35:16,297 One, have you ever, would there ever be a way to remote as, as a developer 615 00:35:16,297 --> 00:35:18,247 of a VM app, I should say bushel? 616 00:35:18,587 --> 00:35:22,307 would there ever be a way to com do remote debugging from Mac to Mac? 617 00:35:23,307 --> 00:35:24,247 Jim Mcac. 618 00:35:24,672 --> 00:35:29,202 We should talk about this offline then, that's something I would love to have. 619 00:35:29,862 --> 00:35:30,732 And secondly 620 00:35:31,399 --> 00:35:33,739 I don't have an answer for you immediately on the Mac to 621 00:35:33,912 --> 00:35:35,142 Immediately, okay. 622 00:35:35,172 --> 00:35:35,202 Okay. 623 00:35:35,702 --> 00:35:39,692 Did you ever try debugging on a Apple Watch? 624 00:35:40,692 --> 00:35:41,412 not yet. 625 00:35:41,592 --> 00:35:42,342 Not yet. 626 00:35:42,680 --> 00:35:44,090 it in any way, please? 627 00:35:44,090 --> 00:35:44,690 Because the 628 00:35:44,742 --> 00:35:45,417 I hope so. 629 00:35:46,400 --> 00:35:47,420 is pretty bad. 630 00:35:47,465 --> 00:35:47,755 Okay. 631 00:35:47,760 --> 00:35:50,700 Le mobile device supports, watch connectivity. 632 00:35:50,700 --> 00:35:52,080 I believe so. 633 00:35:52,300 --> 00:35:52,960 It's possible. 634 00:35:52,960 --> 00:35:52,990 I. 635 00:35:53,539 --> 00:35:57,139 Yeah, it's possible, but is it better than what we have? 636 00:35:57,239 --> 00:35:57,599 Okay. 637 00:35:57,969 --> 00:35:59,719 a couple of things before we close out. 638 00:35:59,719 --> 00:36:02,379 I wanted to know what's next for xTool? 639 00:36:03,679 --> 00:36:03,889 sure. 640 00:36:04,189 --> 00:36:08,929 So I feel like, this is that there's so many, you know, so 641 00:36:08,929 --> 00:36:10,399 many requests that are open. 642 00:36:10,399 --> 00:36:12,679 There's currently like five different fis that are open, and 643 00:36:12,679 --> 00:36:16,934 I think we have, I. We, we touched upon some of my future plans here. 644 00:36:17,324 --> 00:36:19,834 You know, one of them is definitely to figure out the 645 00:36:19,834 --> 00:36:21,754 right way to go about CI support. 646 00:36:22,834 --> 00:36:26,614 'cause yeah, I mean, in an ideal world, you could just take any iOS 647 00:36:26,614 --> 00:36:31,564 app and, switch your Mac Runner for Linux and just have it work. 648 00:36:31,954 --> 00:36:35,944 But, you know, more than that, i, I would also I'm just very excited 649 00:36:35,944 --> 00:36:38,524 about the educational opportunities. 650 00:36:38,624 --> 00:36:42,684 And that was really like why I created xTool to begin with was 651 00:36:42,707 --> 00:36:43,637 like all of us. 652 00:36:44,154 --> 00:36:48,504 yes, you know, so many people like have, the tools to work with to 653 00:36:48,594 --> 00:36:54,144 build iOS apps and this gradually lower the value for them, right? 654 00:36:54,324 --> 00:36:57,824 And, you know, a big part of that would definitely be if we supported 655 00:36:58,004 --> 00:37:01,064 export project to, to a conversion. 656 00:37:01,474 --> 00:37:05,374 So that's something again, talking to the twist folks to see if we can 657 00:37:05,374 --> 00:37:07,174 use some of that technology for that. 658 00:37:07,302 --> 00:37:08,172 Yeah, that would be great. 659 00:37:08,209 --> 00:37:09,709 That would be awesome. 660 00:37:10,059 --> 00:37:13,869 And then, you know, app extensions are another really cool thing that 661 00:37:13,869 --> 00:37:15,579 would, that I'd love to support. 662 00:37:16,059 --> 00:37:16,539 Let's see. 663 00:37:16,569 --> 00:37:20,249 What else are we you know, again, there, there's actually one of, one of the 664 00:37:20,249 --> 00:37:23,359 limitations, is support from macros. 665 00:37:23,469 --> 00:37:28,309 So at the moment, One of the few things that doesn't work is some of 666 00:37:28,309 --> 00:37:32,449 the proprietary macros, like, some of the Swift UI stuff, like at entry. 667 00:37:32,779 --> 00:37:37,429 So I, I would say like at Observable works fine because that's open source and 668 00:37:37,429 --> 00:37:39,879 it's compiled into the LinuxTool chain. 669 00:37:40,479 --> 00:37:44,819 But yeah, some of these macros don't, so I'm, I'm working on liability. 670 00:37:45,499 --> 00:37:49,889 Yeah, so I'm working on a library that re-implement like, at entry 671 00:37:49,889 --> 00:37:56,099 and at, at Animatable or whatever the new Swift UI macros are. 672 00:37:56,369 --> 00:37:59,699 So that's, that's one of the things that is coming up. 673 00:38:00,069 --> 00:38:02,679 And yeah, just in general, you know, like having community 674 00:38:02,679 --> 00:38:04,629 contribution is always amazing. 675 00:38:04,629 --> 00:38:05,949 So, I'm. 676 00:38:06,594 --> 00:38:07,914 I always open to fi there. 677 00:38:07,914 --> 00:38:12,814 There's a whole roadmap if you look at the project section on xTool And, 678 00:38:13,414 --> 00:38:18,124 you know, if anyone is interested in contributing that I always appreciate it. 679 00:38:18,244 --> 00:38:23,104 One other big thing actually is, support for alternative. 680 00:38:23,154 --> 00:38:27,564 Tools like flatter and React, native and Gotland multi-platform. 681 00:38:27,984 --> 00:38:34,914 And, I, I was very surprised to see this, but like xTool has create, has generated 682 00:38:34,914 --> 00:38:37,134 a lot of traction in those communities. 683 00:38:37,854 --> 00:38:37,884 I. 684 00:38:37,967 --> 00:38:38,827 It kind of makes sense. 685 00:38:39,459 --> 00:38:44,159 Yeah, I think I, I, my understanding is the reason for that is that, a lot of 686 00:38:44,159 --> 00:38:47,909 people in those communities are the ones who currently build apps that they would 687 00:38:47,909 --> 00:38:52,259 like to support iOS and they'd like to test with iOS, but they can't because 688 00:38:52,259 --> 00:38:53,699 they don't have the tools to do it. 689 00:38:54,359 --> 00:38:58,859 So yeah, you know, just, doing that sort of thing would be super awesome. 690 00:39:00,082 --> 00:39:02,752 Well, Kabir, thank you so much for joining me today. 691 00:39:02,862 --> 00:39:05,292 Was anything else you wanted to mention before we 692 00:39:05,419 --> 00:39:07,384 I, I think, I think that's about it. 693 00:39:07,422 --> 00:39:07,872 Okay. 694 00:39:08,562 --> 00:39:09,942 where could people find you online? 695 00:39:10,724 --> 00:39:17,984 You can find me on, Twitter at, Kabir, that's K-A-B-I-R-O-B-E-R-A-I, 696 00:39:17,984 --> 00:39:22,094 or for that matter, basically all of my other socials are just by name. 697 00:39:22,552 --> 00:39:24,052 And we'll put links in the show notes. 698 00:39:24,052 --> 00:39:24,357 Of course. 699 00:39:24,884 --> 00:39:25,214 Yeah. 700 00:39:25,244 --> 00:39:29,694 And, you can also check out my website at ro vi.com. 701 00:39:30,134 --> 00:39:34,754 Has not been updated since 2019, but have links in that 702 00:39:36,157 --> 00:39:38,137 It never, it never quarantined. 703 00:39:38,137 --> 00:39:38,527 Wow. 704 00:39:39,037 --> 00:39:40,957 Well thank you so much, Kabir, for coming on. 705 00:39:41,287 --> 00:39:43,897 and congratulations to your, your degree. 706 00:39:43,987 --> 00:39:44,677 This is awesome. 707 00:39:44,714 --> 00:39:46,394 thank you so much for having me. 708 00:39:46,867 --> 00:39:51,902 People can find me, at bright digit.com is my company's website. 709 00:39:52,492 --> 00:39:58,432 And I'm on social media, Leo g Dion, check all the socials there and the links below. 710 00:39:58,852 --> 00:40:02,632 If you really enjoyed this episode, please think about, subscribing. 711 00:40:02,752 --> 00:40:04,312 And we also have a Patreon. 712 00:40:04,772 --> 00:40:08,672 Thank you to all Patreons for supporting this program. 713 00:40:09,722 --> 00:40:13,322 And if you have an idea about something you wanna talk about on the show, 714 00:40:13,322 --> 00:40:15,242 please reach out to me and let me know. 715 00:40:16,147 --> 00:40:18,727 And if you're listening to this on a podcast player, of course, 716 00:40:18,727 --> 00:40:20,357 please and and subscribe as well. 717 00:40:20,657 --> 00:40:23,447 Thank you for joining me, and I look forward to talking to you again. 718 00:40:23,507 --> 00:40:24,107 Bye everybody.