xcodeproj-format

Format Xcode project file (project.pbxproj) exactly the same way Xcode would format it.

Xcode always writes project file in normalized format. External changes to the file may leave it not normalized. If it is still valid, Xcode will read it just fine - but will re-normalize on save. This causes unrelated changes in the file to appear later in commits. Use this tool to keep the file normalized:

Sample Uses

• Cleanup after merge - especially if conflicts were resolved
• Cleanup after modifying project file manually or with other tools
• Detect and reject misformatted or corrupted project files in CI
• plutil can be used to convert project file to JSON for further processing. This tool can be used to convert it back from JSON to the canonic format.

Install

brew install odnoletkov/tap/xcodeproj-format

Build

git clone https://github.com/odnoletkov/xcodeproj-format
cd xcodeproj-format
xcodebuild
# Produces build/Release/xcodeproj-format

Usage

xcodeproj-format path/to/foo.xcodeproj

xcodeproj-format path/to/foo.xcodeproj/project.pbxproj

xcodeproj-format path1 path2 ...

cd path/to/project
xcodeproj-format

Limitations

• The tool uses Xcode's internal frameworks so it may break with new version (although this hasn't happened in years)
• ~1 second overhead to load and initialize Xcode state on each invocation

TODO

• Daemonize to avoid initialization overhead for back-to-back invocations
• Add stdin-stdout mode

Credits

• xcproj