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Features • Usage • Tips

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gym is part of fastlane: The easiest way to automate beta deployments and releases for your iOS and Android apps.

What’s gym?

gym builds and packages iOS apps for you. It takes care of all the heavy lifting and makes it super easy to generate a signed ipa or app file 💪

gym is a replacement for shenzhen.

Before gym

xcodebuild clean archive -archivePath build/MyApp \
                         -scheme MyApp
xcodebuild -exportArchive \
           -exportFormat ipa \
           -archivePath "build/MyApp.xcarchive" \
           -exportPath "build/MyApp.ipa" \
           -exportProvisioningProfile "ProvisioningProfileName"

With gym

fastlane gym

Why gym?

gym uses the latest APIs to build and sign your application which results in much faster build times.

	gym Features
🚀	gym builds 30% faster than other build tools like shenzhen
🏁	Beautiful inline build output
📖	Helps you resolve common build errors like code signing issues
🚠	Sensible defaults: Automatically detect the project, its schemes and more
🔗	Works perfectly with fastlane and other tools
📦	Automatically generates an ipa and a compressed dSYM file
🚅	Don’t remember any complicated build commands, just gym
🔧	Easy and dynamic configuration using parameters and environment variables
💾	Store common build settings in a Gymfile
📤	All archives are stored and accessible in the Xcode Organizer
💻	Supports both iOS and Mac applications

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Usage

fastlane gym

That’s all you need to build your application. If you want more control, here are some available parameters:

fastlane gym --workspace "Example.xcworkspace" --scheme "AppName" --clean

If you need to use a different Xcode installation, use [xcodes](https://docs.fastlane.tools/actions/xcodes) or define DEVELOPER_DIR:

DEVELOPER_DIR="/Applications/Xcode6.2.app" fastlane gym

For a list of all available parameters use

fastlane action gym

If you run into any issues, use the verbose mode to get more information

fastlane gym --verbose

Set the right export method if you’re not uploading to App Store or TestFlight:

fastlane gym --export_method ad-hoc

To pass boolean parameters make sure to use gym like this:

fastlane gym --include_bitcode true --include_symbols false

To access the raw xcodebuild output open ~/Library/Logs/gym

Gymfile

Since you might want to manually trigger a new build but don’t want to specify all the parameters every time, you can store your defaults in a so called Gymfile.

Run fastlane gym init to create a new configuration file. Example:

scheme("Example")

sdk("iphoneos9.0")

clean(true)

output_directory("./build")    # store the ipa in this folder
output_name("MyApp")           # the name of the ipa file

Export options

Since Xcode 7, gym is using new Xcode API which allows us to specify export options using plist file. By default gym creates this file for you and you are able to modify some parameters by using export_method, export_team_id, include_symbols or include_bitcode. If you want to have more options, like creating manifest file for app thinning, you can provide your own plist file:

export_options("./ExportOptions.plist")

or you can provide hash of values directly in the Gymfile:

export_options({
  method: "ad-hoc",
  manifest: {
    appURL: "https://example.com/My App.ipa",
  },
  thinning: ""
})

Optional: If gym can’t automatically detect the provisioning profiles to use, you can pass a mapping of bundle identifiers to provisioning profiles:

build_app(
  scheme: "Release",
  export_method: "app-store",
  export_options: {
    provisioningProfiles: {
      "com.example.bundleid" => "Provisioning Profile Name",
      "com.example.bundleid2" => "Provisioning Profile Name 2"
    }
  }
)

Note: If you use fastlane with match you don’t need to provide those values manually, unless you pass a plist file into export_options

For the list of available options run xcodebuild -help.

Setup code signing

• More information on how to get started with codesigning
• Docs on how to set up your Xcode project

Automating the whole process

gym works great together with fastlane, which connects all deployment tools into one streamlined workflow.

Using fastlane you can define a configuration like

lane :beta do
  scan
  gym(scheme: "MyApp")
  crashlytics
end

# error block is executed when a error occurs
error do |lane, exception|
  slack(
    # message with short human friendly message
    message: exception.to_s,
    success: false,
    # Output containing extended log output
    payload: { "Output" => exception.error_info.to_s }
  )
end

When gym raises an error the error_info property will contain the process output
in case you want to display the error in 3rd party tools such as Slack.

You can then easily switch between the beta provider (e.g. testflight, hockey, s3 and more).

How does it work?

gym uses the latest APIs to build and sign your application. The 2 main components are

• xcodebuild
• xcpretty

When you run gym without the --silent mode it will print out every command it executes.

To build the archive gym uses the following command:

set -o pipefail && \
xcodebuild -scheme 'Example' \
-project './Example.xcodeproj' \
-configuration 'Release' \
-destination 'generic/platform=iOS' \
-archivePath '/Users/felixkrause/Library/Developer/Xcode/Archives/2015-08-11/ExampleProductName 2015-08-11 18.15.30.xcarchive' \
archive | xcpretty

After building the archive it is being checked by gym. If it’s valid, it gets packaged up and signed into an ipa file.

gym automatically chooses a different packaging method depending on the version of Xcode you’re using.

Xcode 7 and above

/usr/bin/xcrun path/to/xcbuild-safe.sh -exportArchive \
-exportOptionsPlist '/tmp/gym_config_1442852529.plist' \
-archivePath '/Users/fkrause/Library/Developer/Xcode/Archives/2015-09-21/App 2015-09-21 09.21.56.xcarchive' \
-exportPath '/tmp/1442852529'

gym makes use of the new Xcode 7 API which allows us to specify the export options using a plist file. You can find more information about the available options by running xcodebuild --help.

Using this method there are no workarounds for WatchKit or Swift required, as it uses the same technique Xcode uses when exporting your binary.

Note: the xcbuild-safe.sh script wraps around xcodebuild to workaround some incompatibilities.

Use ‘ProvisionQL’ for advanced Quick Look in Finder

Install ProvisionQL.

It will show you ipa files like this: