Part 1: Add git to Your New Xcode Project

My preferred remote repository

This is part one of a series of articles on how to create a new Xcode project.

If you’re looking for the next step that I recommend, take a look at Part 2: structuring your folders.

When you start a new Xcode project, make sure you add git.

I learnt the hard way that it’s best if you do not let Xcode manage git for you. It leads to a lot of warnings down the track that are tough to manage. Warnings crop up in other unrelated projects about missing files if you haven’t kept your working directory clean in every project.

I don’t know of any benefits to letting Xcode manage git for you, so in my mind, there’s no upside!

If you are new to git and gitflow, take a look at A Beginner’s guide to Gitflow. That might give you some more context for why we want to set it up here.

Let’s get started.

Set up git

• Start a new Xcode project. Don’t let Xcode manage git for you. It is a checkbox option along the way, near the bottom of the screen. Uncheck the box.

Uncheck the “source control” box on the bottom

• Open Terminal and navigate to your project directory by typing in : cd \Users\etc etc . You can type in cd and then drag and drop the folder from Finder into Terminal. This auto-populates the file path. Drag and drop the highest level folder. It’s the folder containing the Xcode project.
• Type the following into Terminal:

git init
touch .gitignore

Setup your .gitignore file

Without a .gitignore, git will track all your local user settings and try to commit them each time you make a change. These local settings aren’t relevant to the project. Also if you’re collaborating with others on the project, you don’t want to affect their local settings.

This is why we use a .gitignore file.

You can decide what to put into this file. There are many resources online to help you out.

For me, I’m just starting out and so my .gitignore file is really simple. Use open .gitignore to open the file.

# Xcode
## Build generated
build/
DerivedData/ 
## Various settings
*.pbxuser
xcuserdata/

Setup a .gitignore later on

If you have already started building things and you are adding a .gitignore file a bit later on in your project, you’ll need to do a bit of additional work. This is because you have probably committed a change that you may now like to ignore.

In this scenario, git will not ignore that file, even after you have created a gitignore file. You have to remove that file from the git cache. This StackOverflow post explains it really well. I’ve copied it here as well.

// Replace [project] and [username] with your info
// This is all one line, starting with git, ending with .xcuserstate
git rm --cached [project].xcodeproj/project.xcworkspace/xcuserdata/[username].xcuserdatad/UserInterfaceState.xcuserstate
git commit -m "Removed file that shouldn't be tracked"

You can tell you are in this situation when you switch branches. git will keep telling you that you have changes that you need to discard or stash.

If for some reason the above commands don’t work for you, then you can try this alternative method:

• Commit all pending changes (one way to do this is git add . then git commit -m "My commit message")
• Type in git rm -r --cached . Don’t forget the full stop at the end. This will make a lot of changes that you will need to add and commit.
• Go ahead and commit all these new changes. E.g. Type in git add . then git commit -m "Set up .gitignore to work properly"
• Push your commits to your remote branch (git push origin HEAD) and then merge with master if you aren’t on the master branch (git checkout master, then git merge name_of_feature_branch_with_gitignore_commit)

Now you shouldn’t have any issues switching branches anymore.

Connect your local git repo to a remote repository

• Make some changes to your project. Adding the gitignore file should be enough to count as a change. If you don’t make any changes, there will be an error when you push to the remote. I simply committed the initial project to the master branch.

git checkout -b master
git add .
git commit -m "Initial project setup"

Now it’s time to connect your repo to a remote.

Set up Bitbucket

• Create a new repo in Bitbucket
• Sync your folder with Bitbucket. Bitbucket has the instructions listed for you. I’ve copied them below:

git remote add origin ssh://git@bitbucket.org/your personal path/your project.git
git push -u origin master //This will return an error if you haven't made any changes in git in your local repo

Instructions for GitHub

• Create a new repository on GitHub. Below are the settings I use.

• Now push the existing repo to your remote GitHub repo with the following code. You can find this code on the GitHub site. It will write it out for you to copy and paste into terminal.

git remote add origin https://github.com/gitwillgiveyoualink
git push -u origin master

Add repo to Sourcetree

Sourcetree is a tool you can download and install on your laptop if you don’t want to use git on your Terminal. It has a pretty interface so you point and click instead of typing onto the command line in Terminal.

There are other tools out there, such as Github desktop. Or if you prefer using Terminal, feel free to continue doing this.

These are the steps to add the repo to Sourcetree, so that in the future, you can use Sourcetree to manage your commits.

• File -> New
• Add existing local repository
• Click on the overarching folder. Mine is Xcode -> TrackMyLife

Done!

This is part one of a series of articles on how to create a new Xcode project.

If you’re looking for the next step that I recommend, take a look at Part 2: structuring your folders.