Maintaining Xcodes for 10,000+ monthly users

I maintain Xcodes.app and the Xcodes command-line tool alongside an open-source community. Together, they are used by more than 10,000 people each month to install, manage, and switch between versions of Xcode.

Compatibility across hardware

One of the engineering challenges is getting the tools to work across the different hardware people use. That challenge spans both the native macOS app and the command-line tool: two ways to manage Xcode, maintained as part of the same open-source community.

Keeping pace with Apple

The other ongoing challenge is Apple’s constant updates. The software these tools work with keeps changing, so maintenance is a continuing part of the project.

Those two concerns—hardware compatibility and changes from Apple—are central to my work on Xcodes. Supporting more than 10,000 monthly users means keeping that maintenance work going as the environment around the tools evolves.

The app repository and CLI repository are the places to follow releases, report issues, explore the code, or contribute.