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The Project Directory

When you create a new project, Xcode creates a project directory to hold your project’s contents. The project directory contains the project package, which holds project metadata—as described in the previous section—and user information. The project package has the same name as the project and carries the extension .xcode. For more on the project package, see “Project Packages.”

In addition to the project package, the project directory can also contain:

• Project files and folders. Source files can live anywhere on your system, but keeping them in your project directory makes it easy to move the project and its contents around. By default, Xcode interprets most paths relative to the project directory.

  You can organize files into any number of subfolders within the project directory. This includes folders for localized resources, as described in “Customizing for Different Regions.”

  If you create a project from one of Xcode’s project templates, the project directory already contains a number of example source files. For more on the files in a project, see “Files in a Project.”

• Build folder. When you build a target, Xcode generates a number of files, including the target’s finished product. By default, Xcode creates a build folder in the project directory to hold the files that it creates. The build folder can, however, reside at any location in the filesystem. For more information on the build folder, see “Build Locations.”

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