Mulitple architecture binaries in iOS

Here are some things I frequently forget and find useful when working with fat binaties, XCFrameworks and multiple architectures. Here are some little bits of information that are useful. Xcode provides useful commands like nm, otool and lipo.

Bits of useful information

Getting the available architectures present in a framework?

> lipo -info Sample.framework/sample
Architectures in the fat file: openssl are: i386 x86_64 armv7 arm64

Check if the compiled binary was built using bitcode? Do it individually for each of the previous architecture found in the previous command. In this case, only armv7 and arm64 were compiled using bitcode.

> otool -arch i386 -l Sample.framework/sample | grep __LLVM
> otool -arch x86_64 -l Sample.framework/sample | grep __LLVM
> otool -arch armv7 -l Sample.framework/sample | grep __LLVM
    segname __LLVM
    segname __LLVM
> otool -arch arm64 -l Sample.framework/sample | grep __LLVM
    segname __LLVM
    segname __LLVM

Extracting architectures from a fat binary creating a single architecture file.

lipo -extract armv7 Sample.framework/sample -output sample-armv7
lipo -extract arm64 Sample.framework/sample -output sample-arm64

Create a multi-architecture binary by joining single-architecture binaries

> lipo sample-arm64 sample-armv7 -create -output sample-combined
> lipo -info sample-combined
Architectures in the fat file: sample-combined are: armv7 arm64

Create XCFramework from a Xcode project. It’s possible to export both architectures, simulator and device, by archiving the project.

xcodebuild archive \
    -scheme Sample \
    -archivePath $HOME/Sample-iphoneos.xcarchive \
    -sdk iphoneos \
    BUILD_LIBRARIES_FOR_DISTRIBUTION=YES \
    SKIP_INSTALL=NO \
    ENABLE_BITCODE=NO

xcodebuild archive \
    -scheme Sample \
    -archivePath $HOME/Sample-iphonesimulator.xcarchive \
    -sdk iphonesimulator \
    -destination="generic/platform=iOS"
    BUILD_LIBRARIES_FOR_DISTRIBUTION=YES \
    SKIP_INSTALL=NO \
    ENABLE_BITCODE=NO

Join both architectures present in each of the archived binaries to create the XCFramework that contains both of them.

xcodebuild -create-xcframework \
    -framework $HOME/Sample-iphoneos.xcarchive/Products/Library/Frameworks/Sample.framework \
    -framework $HOME/Sample-iphonesimulator.xcarchive/Products/Library/Frameworks/Sample.framework \
    -output $HOME/Sample.xcframework

Does this binary contain a specific class?

> nm Sample.framework/Sample | grep '_OBJC_CLASS_$_SAMPLE_CLASS'