Xcode 9 is Unacceptable

> I myself reported 7 bugs so far, and there are many more to report. But I gave up.

Can you please write the bugs you found out?

I am using a few different developer accounts.

So, my bug reports are scattered among them.

But some of the reports:

34568927

Xcode 9 - Comparison View scrolling issues

34569033

Xcode 9 - Code folding does not work for some brackets

34652414

Xcode 9 - Warnings Not Disappearing

34707213

Xcode 9 - Document Items menu is laggy

34652506

Xcode 9 - Newly added files not added/staged for git

I completely agree.

Xcode GMs were of deteriorating quality over last few years. But Xcode 9 brings it to next level.

I understand that many developers can have pleasant experience with it. But I know many others (hence: "we" is justified) that experience serious negative impact.

I'd guess that many devs who do not complain are working on pure-swift project with relatively small codebase. And on the other hand, many devs working on big projects with huge codebases, that combine swift and obj-c, include plenty of external dependencies, etc, do experience issues that make them almost unproductive (and this is for projects that are completely fine under Xcode 8!).

Some of the issues I experience with latest Xcode:

- Compiler often segfaults over simple typos.

- Autocompletion doesn't work (moreover: it is just a nuisance, as it autocompletes anything I write by suggesting strings coming only from assets!).

- Code highlighting works only if you are not writing any code.

- Jumping to declaration works only with highlighting (so rarely)

- LLDB crashes

This list is not exhaustive. Give me 2 minutes in Xcode and I can experience all of them - I'm really not exaggerating here. That's how my daily work looks like since Xcode 9 release.

Don't get me wrong, but just because you are sipping your ******** laying down at a Caribbean beach on a shiny day, it does not mean the world is a perfect place.

I wish I could share the pleasure with you.

By, "we" , for at least, I mean five of my friends and co-workers.

But I am pretty sure there are some other people who share the same teribble experience.

I never said these are showstoppers. We can still work, but it is kinda walking in the mud.

Things you call "minor irritations" are costing us time and energy, makes us feel tired much more quickly.

I am not going to list all the issues here one by one.

Just search for xcode9 on stackoverflow and see yourself that most of them not fixed since beta.

I have played enough with embedded systems, since the times you need to wait for a few weeks just to get a Z80.

Maybe you are right, I should give them a try again 🙂

Thank god! I knew it, we are not alone 😀

I noticed as well the problem with jump to definition:

h ttps://forums.developer.apple.com/thread/88705

So that probably means there's some bug here (XCode 9.1ß)

Well, I am a developer who's working on a pure Swift pet project with a relatively small codebase in the spare time, and I am experiencing all of the issues that you mentioned. Hence, I am not even using pods. To be more productive, I had to switch to the AppCode to edit the code and to use Xcode purely for debugging and interface building.

And what's makes the situation worse, Xcode 9.1 Beta doesn't resolve the issue of constant crashing of Swift compiler on literally ANY mistype.

I am actually curious what is the "safe path" or a "comfort zone project" for Xcode 9 which makes it work like a charm 🙂

How Apple can ignore such an important dev tool is beyond me

Totally agree. Xcode9 and safari are making my work more stressful.

We're also experiencing all of the issues listed above in our team. It's exhausting.

I can conform problems with Xcode. Sometimes Xcode stucks in the build process and I have to restart the system. It seems to be a problem with the new file systems.

Furthermore I'm missing code block folding in Xcode 9. It's only possible to fold methods with the Xcode menu. For me, code block folding was very usefull to get a better overview for a code review.

Unfortunately, High Sierra has many problems. Tthe Spotlight API devlivers uncomplete results and the Social API is not working any more. So we have to find workarounds for our previously working app.

100% agree! XCode 9, it's a disaster.

A bug among many others: Add a file by drag drop -> The file not added to compile sources!!!

I totally agree with you! XCode seems to has a huge memory leak. In Activity Manager I saw that XCode is using 44 GB Memory at all and OSX wants me to close other programms.


I also have the issue that the Filetree is ultra slow. If you remove a file from a project which was used before and had a compile error, the error is stil visible even if you recompile your code.

Also had issues with the storyboard...

A friend of mine told me a few years ago "try to avoid using the XCode GM or the fresh released version...", now I know why he gave me this advise.

Unfortunately this time I had to use the new Version that early because of the UINavigationBar changes…. My self defined Backbutton Image wasn’t placed like in iOS 10.

I felt the same pains - as you can see many have been reporting Xcode 9 at least IDE issues in this forum "Apple Developer Forums / Xcode / Xcode IDE and Editor".

So wonder how Apple can continue not to respond and try to address this issue asap?

I feel the same. The deterioration is a result of the yearly release software cycle which Apple self-imposed a couple of years ago. Given that the system will continue to increase their complexity year-over-year (and thanks to the completely unnecessary invention of yet another language, but don't get me started on that), I'm pretty sure that things will continue to go downhill.

I'm afraid no one outside of Apple can stop this trend. So yes, we're doomed. Use the stable versions as long as you can (i.e. 8.3.x is looking pretty good to me as long as you don't mix it with 9).

In my work project, after a long struggle, it turned out that a wild

typedef NS_ENUM(BOOL, ...

defined inside 3rd party dependency objc code, which was also used in swift was causing autocompletion failures and segfault during compilation.

You can actually try to dig into the segfault log after failed compilation (e.g. after making a typo in swift code). There should be a common place listed there at the end, where you should look for unconventional things, for example:

1.  While type-checking 'init(for:)' at <filename:line here>
2.  While type-checking declaration 0x7fc1ae21e3c8 at <filename:line here>
3.  While type-checking expression at <filename:line here>
4.  <filename here>: importing '<some symbol here>'
5.  While type-checking expression at [<invalid loc> - <invalid loc>]

Search in file that you see in last 1-2 points and try to figure out what could be an offender there. Hope it'll help.

After fixing this place, the autocompletion works now, a bar with "unexpected error occured" is no more displaying and if you make a mistake somewhere the compiler does not segfault.

Probably it might help to someone: when XCode freezes on compilation or during some other activities - you can try to kill SourceKitService process and then Xcode become responsive again. Saves me hours of debugging.

I completely feel you man. I actually have a feeling a few people here are not iOS developers but rather Xcode developers or some Apple people trying to say they have no issues.

This software is so bad and is getting worse every day. Not just Xcode, pretty much all of apple software. They have no idea even how to use their own tools. Let me give you a nice example:

I wanted to see how Apple handles popovers on iPad when orientation changes. It took a bit to find one but if you open a simple Notes app on iPad, press on one of the top buttons that opens a popup and then rotate device you will see that it is not handled at all, it is bugged, it changes position and becomes a mess! Then their weather app keeps acting off, you need to kill it and relaunch it sometimes to actually see any data. The mailing apps are a joke (on OSX I need to restart if from time to time even)... Even as I am writing this sometimes the position where I am writing jumps back up somewhere in the middle of the text! Wow Apple, this is unbelievable!

Anyway, Xcode is the champion of them all. I have been a professional iOS developer for 8+ years now and have seen quite a few things. I think most issues came to Xcode with introduction to Swift and even now the Objective-C projects work extremely well (I still have a few that need support). There is no excuse like "it works for some", I do not believe it! I have a company here with multiple developers on different computers, different projects, settings, requirements...

Next to that I know loads of people from different companies, different locations around the world and I have failed to find one single person who is experiencing no issues with Xcode 9. I do admit that projects that have less dependencies like cocapods work better and Objective-C projects have great benefits. Stiall thias ias nao excuase faor creaating suach catastraophic IDaE. <-- I had to obscure this statement otherwise it gives "Invalid characters error"!?

Xcode is slow? This is not slow, this is "not working". In many cases the project just keeps rebuilding itself, indexing is failing, code coloring is failing, autosuggest is a joke...

But there is much more:

- I get way too many times when app fails to install for different strange reasons so you need to rebuild

- It loses connection to device and you need to reselect it

- It fails to build for any stupid reason (file size zero) and even worse it does not indicate it. It sometimes just start rebuilding and I am waiting for the app to start on my device while the prosess has stopped quite some time ago.

- When running and you re-run it it will show "cancel" dialog which does not work so you need to "cmd+r"+"esc"+"esc"+"cmd+r"..(repeat a few times).. (this issue was already somewhere on Xcode 8)

- IDE crashes few times a day

- You need to force-quit Xcode few times a day as it gets stuck somewhere

...

But wait, these are the issues that should never happen. But what about all the rest that is supposed to work in Xcode?

- @IBDesignable works only if you use it every second tuesday or something like this (seriously this thing is so unstable)

- Autosuggest of code has been a joke ever sine Swift started

- Publishing to app store through Xcode (instead of application loader) works for about 10% of users

- Provisioning profile and certificate management is a joke. A prank they pull every year by changing it to "better" effectively making it worse

- What happened to dragging files into project from finder in Xcode 9? Suddenly they are not automatically added as source!!!

...

Then there are Swift related things. I started with 2 because there was no need to use it earlier and I still prefer Objective-C for many things:

- Migration from 2 to 3 was not really much of a Swift change then it was a change in the standard library interfaces. The method names have changed and that is why we spent in average 2 days per project for migration!?

- Migration to 4 is a bit smaller but again there is just stupidity mostly with keys and idiotic changes like making constraint priority a concrete structure instead of keeping an integer or whatever

- We got new class like String which lost loads of functionality that is still in NSString. But wait, NSString tools still return String instead of NSString so we need to do like ((("name.txt" as NSString).deletingPathExtension as NSString).appendingPathComponent("addedName") as NSString).appendingPathExtension(".dat").

...

(At this point here I must have written too long of a comment because the page is starting to jump-scroll to top for every letter I add)

Reading all these posts was very sad, but also at the same time so helpful. I was so sure it was my old Macbook Air and it only having 4 gigs of memory, and that was why XCode was running so poorly, as it uses so much memory and the system was building up rather large paging files to try to deal with it. However, I can confirm, that 2 brand new $2000 Mabook Pros with 16 gigs of memory have been running their fans pretty much non stop trying to keep XCode moving along. As soon as I quit XCode everything is back to normal again. If I have an error that is left unfixed as I am completing typing some code out, the memory issue gets even worse, and things begin to hang up and load slower and slower. I do have a big project, but it should not be bringing a brand new $2000 machine that I could barely afford to purchase, to it's knees on an hourly basis. I use CocoaPods a lot and can't even beging to explain what a pain in the **** issues with pods have been, as with every version of XCode I see more and more issues with Pod files I'm using, which leave me the option of adding them to my project manually or removing them. At least if I add them to my project manually I can update the code Apple claims needs to be updated. I have reguarly updated the pod file to make sure Im using the newest versions too. I really think the main issue I am having though, is with IBDesignables demanding a tons of resources from the storyboard to render just for design purposes. There is zero errors and warings in any of my IBdesignables, so not sure why that would be. If my iPhone runs the app that this code generates with zero probelmes and all my pods and IBdesignables work as expected, why the **** is the same project bringing my less than one month old, brand spankin new MacBook Pro to its kees, because XCode has memory issues and it's getting outrageouly bad. I love the new simulator look, but besides that, everythig else is worse, and it uses tons of of resources. What I mean by that is, with nothing else open, besides the HomeKit Simulator and Regular iPhone 7 Simulator, XCode should never be taking up 8-10 gigs or more of memory, I dont care what I have open in XCode. How much memory does it take to run the app on my iPhone, oh ya, not even close to that much?? Apple needs to fix XCode obviously!!!!!!! Also, change the device requirements for XCode to be a 16 gig machine at this point, unless you can actually get XCode running well on 4 gigs of memory, which nothing thus far makes me believe you can, because a 4 gig Macbook Anything, will have to create such a huge paging file in this scenario, that nothing else functions correctly. This is really getting embarrasing at this point. How is a kid for example, without a brand new expensive Mac, ever going to be able to learn to code, when he has to worry about XCode crashing or hanging up the machine so bad, it has to be force quit almost DAILY???????????????????????????????????? Also, seeing as much of coding requires Internet research during the process, this is a great time to mention the memory management issue Safari has with YouTube. If left open for long enough YouTube often causes isses in Safari with memory, so trying to watch YouTube videos on a coding topic I'm researching, is getting increasingly more difficult, the worse Apple lets XCode get here. I thought with a brand new machine it would be a lot better, but only a little, and most deifnitely not $2000 better!!!!!!! I have debated downloading the developer beta of XCode 9.1 beta 2, as it's really that bad, but they have never been any better in the past, so I'm probably going to wait for the next public update. Come on guys. Get it together please!!!!

I just found time to work on some stuff, and this was the first time I tried the new Xcode version 9. Many projects were broken by it, others worked for a while and then started to get strange errors that would come and go, without any particular reason. I.e. build and run, the app was running working just fine. Building and running again, with no change, and then it doesn't want to run — it just says 'finished running', and the debugger says 'Message from debugger: unable to attach'.

Trying to figure out what was wrong I started a completely new project, same result ... at this time I pretty much can't do anything with Xcode. Even newly created projects won't run, or will run 2-3 times, and then Xcode decides it doesn't want to play ball anymore.

As of this moment Xcode 9 has rendered my ability to work at a complete stand-still. I'm not sure if I am missing something, but it seems the errors are pretty much random. I can't induce the error, as it seems to happen by chance. Once it kicks in, the project won't run at all. Tried cleaning project, checking provision profile, etc. — nothing seems to affect the issue, other than Xcode itself.

Have you a free or paid licence ? Free licence are valmid only a short period of time.

May be you should reinstall XCode or try XCode 9.1 beta.

what??? Xcode has always been free to use. Are there new restrictions on its use??? :O

Yep, just look at the 9.1 Beta 2 release notes. 5 issues fixed, 2 in testing and 3 in simulator. All relatively minor. But the fantasy is that there are only 12 known issues. What a joke. Releasing betas for Apple seems to be a marketing ploy aimed at getting people to feel that Apple is responsive. The purpose of Beta 2 release was because it was on the schedule, not that it really fixed any major problems, at least problems that I have daily.

In order to avoid the force quit issue, I quit Xcode every 2 hours, then run a script that deletes all xcode caches, derived data, and resets all simulators. If I am going to do any serious refactoring, I do it with BBEdit. If I don't then when I am copying and pasting functions, xcode just goes off into never, never land.

Sorry, I meant free Apple Developer account not Xcode

+1
SourceKitService gets > 25GB ⚠ every ~25 minutes here.