Adding Fastlane to an Xcode project Aug 15 2019

We can install Fastlane as a Homebrew cask or as a gem. I'll go the gem route.

add a Gemfile on your project:

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#Gemfile
source "https://rubygems.org"

gem "fastlane"

We are going to use bundler. If you are familiar with Ruby development, you will find this standard procedure.

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$ bundle update
$ bundle install

now we can run fastlane because we want to use the version we currently installed, we will run it:

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$ bundle exec fastlane init

Here it'll display a menu to create the initial configuration, We can skip this process and do the manual route. We'll try hard mode, so do it manually.

Fastlane configuration files

Fastlane uses two files for most of the configuration, Appfile and Fastfile. Appfile includes the application's information. Fastfile defines all the lanes that you can use on your fastlane setup. A lane is a set of instructions that you want to put together and run as a whole.

The Fastfile is written in a DSL (Domain Specific Language) for ruby, so you can use ruby inside the Fastfile. If you've used RSpec for your tests, you'll be very comfortable with the DSL.

Setting up Screenshots

We are going to create a new Target. Go to Menu > New > Target ... select iOS UI Testing Bundle.

If we are going to record the UITest. If you get an error "Failed to set plugin placeholders", go to your project info, click your app Target, then select Build Phases and there select the extension and make sure that copy only when installing checkbox is ticked.

run in your Project's folder:

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bundle exec fastlane snapshot init

And follow the instructions on the screen:

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Open your Xcode project and make sure to do the following:
1) Add a new UI Test target to your project
2) Add the ./fastlane/SnapshotHelper.swift to your UI Test target
   You can move the file anywhere you want
3) Call `setupSnapshot(app)` when launching your app

  let app = XCUIApplication()
  setupSnapshot(app)
  app.launch()

4) Add `snapshot("0Launch")` to wherever you want to trigger screenshots
5) Add a new Xcode scheme for the newly created UITest target
6) Add a Check to enable the `Shared` box of the newly created scheme

This means add the snapshot(IDENTIFIER). We can now edit our Snapfile, the configuration file for snapshots. Remember to set the correct scheme.

If we want to create a lane for it, edit your Fastfile and add your lane.

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  desc "Take snapshots"
  lane :screenshots do
    capture_screenshots
    #upload_to_app_store
  end

You can now run the command:

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$ bundle exec fastlane screenshots

Related topics/notes of interest

• How to fix the "Failed to set plugin placeholder"
• To view the documents for the user in the simulator. set a breakpoint and:

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po NSHomeDirectory()