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building iOS app on bitbucket pipelines

an le_xnopbv

Hi All,

Currently, I'm using bitbucket pipelines for CI/CD.

I have the project with react native and I already build and deploy success app for Android. But now I want to build the iOS app, I don't know whether bitbucket can support to build iOS such as Appcenter?

Many thanks

Accepted answers

Daniel Eads

Hey there!

Unfortunately we don't support iOS builds in Bitbucket Pipelines. The way Apple licensing works requires apps for iOS to be built with XCode running on MacOS. Even frameworks like Expo must be run on a MacOS system. It's only legal to run MacOS on Apple hardware, so there is no way to scale iOS development out in an environment like AWS.

Some specialized companies work around this by setting up clusters of Mac Minis in their own data centers:

5ad62fac9b5a951f39531dd4_macminis-lv (Data center rack of Mac Mini hardware, image credit MacStadium)

The end result of this is that Bitbucket Pipelines won't be able to natively handle an iOS build. With a third party service that supports Mac builds, you could include a step in your pipeline that calls out for a build (on dedicated Mac hardware somewhere). It would not be as straightforward as doing the entire pipeline natively, but it would be similar to having a build agent on special hardware that is fairly common in the on-premise world.

Additional reading: Comparison of Mac hardware hosting options

Cheers,
Daniel

All comments

Daniel Eads

Hey there!

Some specialized companies work around this by setting up clusters of Mac Minis in their own data centers:

5ad62fac9b5a951f39531dd4_macminis-lv (Data center rack of Mac Mini hardware, image credit MacStadium)

Additional reading: Comparison of Mac hardware hosting options

Cheers,
Daniel

an le_xnopbv

Hi @Daniel Eads

Thanks for your answer

Majd Sabah

I used Windows 10 machine to generate iOS build signed with Unreal Engine 4, the setup officially done by UE4 documentation? I don't how they are done it, but as far as I know you can generate iOS build only if you are using Blueprint (no coding).

Additional reading: UE 4 iOS setup

cc @Daniel Eads @an le

Regards,

Majd

Daniel Eads

Right, I think that's the distinction:

The PC-only workflow described in this guide requires a pure Blueprint only project. If you wish to use any code in your project, you will also need a Mac to compile the code. You can follow the Building for iOS on Windows page to develop code-based projects for iOS on a PC.

To me, it sounds like they may have a binary already compiled and what the UE4 blueprint does is load some assets that don't require a recompile. Interesting workaround! Unfortunately I don't think this would be usable for the things most folks are putting through pipelines. Thanks for sharing though, that's really cool!

Evghenii Todorov

Hi @Daniel Eads

We are migrating our iOS project from Github to BitBucket now. On GitHub we configured self-hosted Github Actions that launches ios builds on macOs server we own via self hosted runners.

We would like to use BitBucket pipelines for running tests and other ios routines. Is any way to connect BitBucket Pipelines with our macOs server? If you know any tutorials how to do this you are welcome.

Best regards,

Evghenii

Daniel Eads

Hi @Evghenii Todorov,

Thanks for this question! Today, you would need to trigger the build on your Mac hardware via Webhook/Rest API call to another service completing the build. We have an on-premise product called Bamboo that can handle build plans, while some teams also use Jenkins. Here's a tutorial covering Bitbucket Cloud and Bamboo integration .

In the near future we're also going to be releasing a feature for Bitbucket Cloud called Bitbucket Pipelines Runners . This will allow you to run a build pipeline on your own hardware (thus allowing you to use XCode binaries on a Mac) from Bitbucket without licensing a separate product.