Use Xcodegen to generate Xcode project files

[uloco]

Introduction

A tool called xcodegen could make upgrading between react native versions a lot easier concerning project files from xcode.

Details

Changes that are made in the project.pbxproj file are very hard to apply when upgrading between react native versions. The upgrade helper tool is a good starting point, but the diffs are not really easy to understand/apply.

There is a tool called xcodegen, which let's you configure your project via json/yaml and generate the project files afterwards. The react native team could use this project.yaml file to describe the project and it's changes and so the file diffs in between projects would be way easier to reason about and make upgrades a lot simpler. Users would just apply the changes to their own project.yaml and merge it with their own customizations. Then they would just create their project files with the xcodegen tool.

They are also working on a way to do this in the other direction, so generate project.yaml config from an existing xcode project, which would make it even easier to migrate to this approach.

Discussion points

• Is there any plan on integrating this workflow?
• What needs to be done here to make it work? What obstacles are here?
• Is there a better way that I do not know about currently? How do you deal with project file changes that are done between RN updates or just from two developers (conflicts) right now?