Xcodes

A small part of a developer’s everyday toolkit

Xcodes helps developers install, manage, and switch between multiple versions of Xcode. It’s available as a native macOS app and a command-line tool.

Maintaining tools for 10,000+ monthly users

I maintain Xcodes.app and the Xcodes command-line project, working alongside an open-source community. Together, the app and CLI are used by more than 10,000 people each month.

My role is ongoing maintenance of these shared projects. The app offers a graphical interface, while the CLI lets developers manage Xcode from the terminal.

The engineering challenge

A central challenge is getting the tools to work across the different hardware people use. Supporting that range of machines is part of maintaining both the app and the CLI.

Apple’s constant updates add another moving target. Keeping Xcodes useful means continuing to adapt as Apple changes the software and systems these tools work with. Compatibility is ongoing work, rather than a one-time milestone.

I wrote more about this in Maintaining Xcodes for 10,000+ monthly users.

Out in the open

Both projects are open source. Their repositories are the place to explore the code, follow releases, report an issue, or contribute.