How can I display the application version revision in my application's settings bundle?

user_19331 0
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I would like to include the application version and internal revision, something like 1.0.1 (r1243), in my application's settings bundle.

The Root.plist file contains a fragment like this...

     <dict>
        <key>Type</key>
        <string>PSTitleValueSpecifier</string>
        <key>Title</key>
        <string>Version</string>
        <key>Key</key>
        <string>version_preference</string>
        <key>DefaultValue</key>
        <string>VersionValue</string>
        <key>Values</key>
        <array>
            <string>VersionValue</string>
        </array>
        <key>Titles</key>
        <array>
            <string>VersionValue</string>
        </array>
    </dict>

and I would like to replace the "VersionValue" string at build time.

I have a script that can extract the version number from my repository, what I need is a way to process (pre-process) the Root.plist file, at build time, and replace the revision number without affecting the source file.

settings-bundle application-settings xcode iphone
13 Answers

There is another solution that can be much simpler than either of the previous answers. Apple bundles a command-line tool called PlistBuddy inside most of its installers, and has included it in Leopard at /usr/libexec/PlistBuddy.

Since you want to replace VersionValue, assuming you have the version value extracted into $newVersion, you could use this command:

/usr/libexec/PlistBuddy -c "Set :VersionValue $newVersion" /path/to/Root.plist

No need to fiddle with sed or regular expressions, this approach is quite straightforward. See the man page for detailed instructions. You can use PlistBuddy to add, remove, or modify any entry in a property list. For example, a friend of mine blogged about incrementing build numbers in Xcode using PlistBuddy.

Note: If you supply just the path to the plist, PlistBuddy enters interactive mode, so you can issue multiple commands before deciding to save changes. I definitely recommend doing this before plopping it in your build script.

user_1202920

My lazy man's solution was to update the version number from my application code. You could have a default (or blank) value in the Root.plist and then, somewhere in your startup code:

NSString *version = [[[NSBundle mainBundle] infoDictionary] objectForKey:@"CFBundleVersion"];
[[NSUserDefaults standardUserDefaults] setObject:version forKey:@"version_preference"];

The only catch is that your app would have to be run at least once for the updated version to appear in the settings panel.

You could take the idea further and update, for instance, a counter of how many times your app has been launched, or other interesting bits of information.

Admin1

With Xcode 11.4, you can use the following steps to display the app version in your application's settings bundle.

Set $(MARKETING_VERSION) and $(CURRENT_PROJECT_VERSION) variables

Note: if $(MARKETING_VERSION) and $(CURRENT_PROJECT_VERSION) variables appear for Bundle version string (short) and Bundle version keys in Info.plist, you can skip the following steps and jump to the next section.

  1. Open the Xcode project.
  2. Open Project Navigator (cmd1), select your project to reveal your project's settings then select the app target.
  3. Select the General tab.
  4. In the Identity section, change the Version field content to some new value (e.g. 0.1.0) and change the Build field content to some new value (e.g. 12). These 2 changes will create $(MARKETING_VERSION) and $(CURRENT_PROJECT_VERSION) variables in Info.plist file.

Create and configure Settings Bundle

  1. In the Project Navigator, select your project.
  2. Select File > New > File… (cmdN).
  3. Select the iOS tab.
  4. Select Settings Bundle in the Resource section, then click Next and Create.
  5. Select Root.plist and open it as source code. Replace its content with the code below:
<?xml version="1.0" encoding="UTF-8"?>
<!DOCTYPE plist PUBLIC "-//Apple//DTD PLIST 1.0//EN" "http://www.apple.com/DTDs/PropertyList-1.0.dtd">
<plist version="1.0">
<dict>
    <key>PreferenceSpecifiers</key>
    <array>
        <dict>
            <key>DefaultValue</key>
            <string></string>
            <key>Key</key>
            <string>version_preference</string>
            <key>Title</key>
            <string>Version</string>
            <key>Type</key>
            <string>PSTitleValueSpecifier</string>
        </dict>
    </array>
    <key>StringsTable</key>
    <string>Root</string>
</dict>
</plist>

Add a Run Script

  1. In the Project Navigator, select your project.
  2. Select the app target.
  3. Select the Build Phases tab.
  4. Click + > New Run Script Phase.
  5. Drag and drop the new phase somewhere above Copy Bundle Resources section. In this way, the script will be executed before compiling the application.
  6. Open the newly added Run Script phase and add the following script:
version="$MARKETING_VERSION"
build="$CURRENT_PROJECT_VERSION"
/usr/libexec/PlistBuddy -c "Set PreferenceSpecifiers:0:DefaultValue $version ($build)" "${SRCROOT}/Settings.bundle/Root.plist"

Launch app

  1. Run the product (cmdR) on device or simulator.
  2. On the device or simulator, once the app is launched, open Settings app and select your app in the list of third-party apps. The app's version should be displayed as shown below:

Sources

user_19661090

I managed to do what I wanted by using the pListcompiler (http://sourceforge.net/projects/plistcompiler) open source porject.

  1. Using this compiler you can write the property file in a .plc file using the following format:

    plist {
    dictionary {
        key "StringsTable" value string "Root"
        key "PreferenceSpecifiers" value array [
            dictionary {
                key "Type" value string "PSGroupSpecifier"
                key "Title" value string "AboutSection"
            }
            dictionary {
                key "Type" value string "PSTitleValueSpecifier"
                key "Title" value string "Version"
                key "Key" value string "version"
                key "DefaultValue" value string "VersionValue"
                key "Values" value array [
                    string "VersionValue"
                ]
                key "Titles" value array [
                    string "r" kRevisionNumber
                ]
            }
        ]
    }
}

  2. I had a custom run script build phase that was extracting my repository revision to .h file as described by brad-larson here.

  3. The plc file can contain preprocessor directives, like #define, #message, #if, #elif, #include, #warning, #ifdef, #else, #pragma, #error, #ifndef, #endif, xcode environment variables. So I was able to reference the variable kRevisionNumber by adding the following directive

    #include "Revision.h"

  4. I also added a custom script build phase to my xcode target to run the plcompiler every time the project is beeing build

    /usr/local/plistcompiler0.6/plcompile -dest Settings.bundle -o Root.plist Settings.plc

And that was it!

user_193310

My working Example based on @Ben Clayton answer and the comments of @Luis Ascorbe and @Vahid Amiri:

Note: This approach modifies the Settings.bundle/Root.plist file in working copy of repository

  1. Add a settings bundle to your project root. Don't rename it

  2. Open Settings.bundle/Root.plist as SourceCode

    Replace the contents with:

    <?xml version="1.0" encoding="UTF-8"?>
<!DOCTYPE plist PUBLIC "-//Apple//DTD PLIST 1.0//EN" "http://www.apple.com/DTDs/PropertyList-1.0.dtd">
<plist version="1.0">
<dict>
    <key>PreferenceSpecifiers</key>
    <array>
        <dict>
            <key>DefaultValue</key>
            <string></string>
            <key>Key</key>
            <string>version_preference</string>
            <key>Title</key>
            <string>Version</string>
            <key>Type</key>
            <string>PSTitleValueSpecifier</string>
        </dict>
    </array>
    <key>StringsTable</key>
    <string>Root</string>
</dict>
</plist>

  3. Add the following script to the Build, Pre-actions section of the project (target) scheme

    version=$(/usr/libexec/PlistBuddy -c "Print CFBundleShortVersionString" "$PROJECT_DIR/$INFOPLIST_FILE")
build=$(/usr/libexec/PlistBuddy -c "Print CFBundleVersion" "$PROJECT_DIR/$INFOPLIST_FILE")

/usr/libexec/PlistBuddy -c "Set PreferenceSpecifiers:0:DefaultValue $version ($build)" "${SRCROOT}/Settings.bundle/Root.plist"

  4. Build and Run the current scheme

user_30139920

Above answers did not work for me hence I created my custom script.

This dynamically updates the entry from Root.plist

Use run script below. W ill work for sure verified in xcode 10.3.

"var buildVersion" is the version to be displayed in title.

And identifier name is "var version" below for title in settings.bundle Root.plist

cd "${BUILT_PRODUCTS_DIR}"

#set version name to your title identifier's string from settings.bundle
var version = "Version"

#this will be the text displayed in title
longVersion=$(/usr/libexec/PlistBuddy -c "Print CFBundleVersion" "${INFOPLIST_PATH}")
shortVersion=$(/usr/libexec/PlistBuddy -c "Print :CFBundleShortVersionString" ${TARGET_BUILD_DIR}/${INFOPLIST_PATH})
buildVersion="$shortVersion.$longVersion"

path="${WRAPPER_NAME}/Settings.bundle/Root.plist"

settingsCnt=`/usr/libexec/PlistBuddy -c "Print PreferenceSpecifiers:" ${path} | grep "Dict"|wc -l`

for (( idx=0; idx<$settingsCnt; idx++ ))
do
#echo "Welcome $idx times"
val=`/usr/libexec/PlistBuddy -c "Print PreferenceSpecifiers:${idx}:Key" ${path}`
#echo $val

#if ( "$val" == "Version" )
if [ $val == "Version" ]
then
#echo "the index of the entry whose 'Key' is 'version' is $idx."

# now set it
/usr/libexec/PlistBuddy -c "Set PreferenceSpecifiers:${idx}:DefaultValue $buildVersion" $path

# just to be sure that it worked
ver=`/usr/libexec/PlistBuddy -c "Print PreferenceSpecifiers:${idx}:DefaultValue" $path`
#echo 'PreferenceSpecifiers:$idx:DefaultValue set to: ' $ver

fi

done

Example entry in Root.plist

    <dict>
        <key>Type</key>
        <string>PSTitleValueSpecifier</string>
        <key>Title</key>
        <string>Version</string>
        <key>DefaultValue</key>
        <string>We Rock</string>
        <key>Key</key>
        <string>Version</string>
    </dict>

Working sample Root.plist entry

user_83075630

I believe you can do this using a way that's similar to what I describe in this answer (based on this post).

First, you can make VersionValue a variable within Xcode by renaming it to ${VERSIONVALUE}. Create a file named versionvalue.xcconfig and add it to your project. Go to your application target and go to the Build settings for that target. I believe that you need to add VERSIONVALUE as a user-defined build setting. In the lower-right-corner of that window, change the Based On value to "versionvalue".

Finally, go to your target and create a Run Script build phase. Inspect that Run Script phase and paste in your script within the Script text field. For example, my script to tag my BUILD_NUMBER setting with the current Subversion build is as follows: 

REV=`/usr/bin/svnversion -nc ${PROJECT_DIR} | /usr/bin/sed -e 's/^[^:]*://;s/[A-Za-z]//'`
echo "BUILD_NUMBER = $REV" > ${PROJECT_DIR}/buildnumber.xcconfig

This should do the trick of replacing the variable when these values change within your project.

user_196790

These are the variables I had to use for a swift project with Xcode 12.2

version=$(/usr/libexec/PlistBuddy -c "Print CFBundleShortVersionString" "$PROJECT_DIR/$INFOPLIST_FILE")
build="$CURRENT_PROJECT_VERSION"

/usr/libexec/PlistBuddy -c "Set PreferenceSpecifiers:0:FooterText Version $version" "$CODESIGNING_FOLDER_PATH/Settings.bundle/ServerURLSettings.plist"
/usr/libexec/PlistBuddy -c "Set PreferenceSpecifiers:0:FooterText Version $version($build)" "$CODESIGNING_FOLDER_PATH/Settings.bundle/DeveloperSettings.plist"
user_108300890

For me this was the easiest solution:

Add new script build phase before Copy Bundle Resources step

Shell: /usr/bin/env python

Content:

#! /usr/bin/env python
import os
from AppKit import NSMutableDictionary

# Key to replace
settings_key = 'version_preference' # the key of your settings version

# File path
settings_path = os.environ.get('SRCROOT') + "/TheBeautifulNameOfYourOwnApp/Settings.bundle/Root.plist"

# Composing version string
version_string = os.environ.get('MARKETING_VERSION') + " (" + os.environ.get('CURRENT_PROJECT_VERSION') + ")"

# Reading settings plist
settings_plist = NSMutableDictionary.dictionaryWithContentsOfFile_(settings_path)
for dictionary in settings_plist['PreferenceSpecifiers']:
    if 'Key' in dictionary and dictionary['Key'] == settings_key:
        dictionary['DefaultValue'] = version_string

# Save new settings
settings_plist.writeToFile_atomically_(settings_path, True)
user_5118780
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