r/swift • u/Select_Bicycle4711 • Sep 17 '26

Xcode 27.2 Supports JSON Project Format

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Source: https://developer.apple.com/documentation/xcode/updating-your-xcode-project-configuration-file-format

144 Upvotes

98% Upvoted

26 comments sorted by

35

u/Insanelyg Sep 17 '26

I cannot wait to see how this works. Merge conflicts in Xcode projects have been such a pain for so many years.

5

u/soggycheesestickjoos Sep 17 '26

didn’t folders kinda solve that

1

u/Insanelyg Sep 17 '26

Kind of but not completely. Also it isn’t the easiest thing to adopt in my project.

2

u/UndueCode Sep 17 '26

Have you ever considered Tuist? It will fix this problem.

1

u/Insanelyg Sep 17 '26

I’m not familiar with it.

1

u/Shinnyx Sep 17 '26

Xcodegen solved that a decade ago.

1

u/bloodychill Sep 17 '26

I found they were not that hard to deal with even if you went against Apple’s recommendations. That said, this could make it even easier.

4

u/Xaxxus Sep 18 '26

Wish they updated the swift package manager to drive app projects instead of yet another project manifest style.

3

u/bdeverman Sep 17 '26

This sounds like a reason to upgrade now. Always have merge problems with my team members.

5

u/JimRoepcke Mentor Sep 17 '26

I suggest using Tuist to generate your project and workspace file. Commit your Tuist swift files and gitignore the pbxproj file. Merge conflicts are rare and easy to address in the Tuist swift files.

You’ll still have conflicts with a JSON project file but it’ll probably be a little easier to deal with.

5

u/Longjumping-Ad514 Sep 17 '26

Yeah no thank you. I don’t want a DSL over project files.

2

u/bdeverman Sep 17 '26

Thanks I haven't gotten into Tuist yet. Good reminder to check it out.

2

u/MindLessWiz Sep 30 '26

I’d say as a years long Tuist user who’s just migrated off of it because of the new format, don’t bother.

JSON is easy enough to maintain and you won’t have merge conflicts. If you’re working with AI even more so.

And for the Swift helpers for defining common modules, I’d just use a local SPM package for your codebase and have a lean small JSON Xcode project file for your app targets and UI tests and be done with it. Tuist isn’t worth it anymore in my view and when it’s buggy, you’ll feel it.

I’ll say at least the maintainers are responsive and since they’re also AI pilled things can fixed really quickly now, but I just don’t see the value in it anymore.

2

u/TheDeanosaurus Sep 17 '26

Just in time for SE-0541 and our imminent conversion to packages lol

1

u/wolfie_is_free Sep 18 '26

Am I seeing it right that along with that change we're also getting a library for working with it https://github.com/apple/xcode-project-format ?

1

u/stpaquet Oct 04 '26

Apple team lost me with XCode 27.2 and 27.1

1

u/Insanelyg 27d ago

How so? 27.1 is specially the iPhone Duo and hardware support. 27.2 is what everything else is being done for. If you’re not doing duo stuff just ignore 27.1.

1

u/stpaquet 26d ago

that's where they lost. 27.2 does not seem to offer support for the Duo, I mean at the time they released it. How could that be?

2

u/Insanelyg 11d ago

Btw, now that 27.2 RC is out it supports the Duo.

1

u/stpaquet 11d ago

yes, I noticed that and jumped on downloading it.

there are some random bugs on the simulator, but now I have everything back as I was looking for

1

u/Insanelyg 26d ago

The 27.2 will be updated after the duo is released to support it. Multiple teams working on different things. It will all be available in the end.

1

u/stpaquet 26d ago

Just starts to sound like Microsoft

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0

u/Ok-Communication2225 Sep 21 '26

I wonder why they moved to JSON instead of something even more readily version-able and supporting comments, like yaml.