What is an .xcworkspace file?
Xcode often creates a “SomeProject.xcworkspace” file. What is it?
Each .xcworkspace file corresponds to a “workspace” created in Xcode via File > New > Workspace.... You can open them in Xcode, just like you can open projects.
But it’s not actually a file, it’s a directory. Only Finder attempts to confuse you by displaying directories with this extension as files.
The important file is SomeProject.xcworkspace/contents.xcworkspacedata. This is an XML file, which looks like:
<?xml version="1.0" encoding="UTF-8"?>
<Workspace version="1.0">
<FileRef ...></FileRef>
<Group ...>
<FileRef ...></FileRef>
...
</Group>
<FileRef ...></FileRef>
...
</Workspace>
That is, an arbitrary tree, where the root is a <Workspace> element, the leaves are <FileRef> elements, and everything in-between is a <Group>.
<Groups> are like directories; they are displayed as a directory tree in the “Project navigator” when you open the workspace in Xcode. An example of a <Group>:
<Group location="container:" name="foobar">
</Group>
The name property is the title in the Project navigator. (What is container:? Who knows?!)
The <FileRef> elements are like “files” in those “directories”. An example of a <FileRef>:
<FileRef location="group:foo/bar/SomeProject.xcodeproj"></FileRef>
What is that group: protocol? It includes an XCode project as the sole member of a “group”.
The path foo/bar/SomeProject.xcodeproj is relative to the directory containing the .xcworkspace. So if you have $ROOT/SomeProject.xcworkspace/contents.xcworkspacedata containing a <FileRef location="group:foo/bar/SomeProject.xcodeproj"></FileRef>, the relative path resolves to $ROOT/foo/bar/SomeProject.xcodeproj.
Tagged . All content copyright James Fisher 2016. This post is not associated with my employer.
TigYog