Xcode Compilation Database

Generate a Compilation Database from Xcode's build log - nothing more :).

Context

Compilation Database is a file format for storing compile commands. Program language tooling needs a Compilation Databases as input in order to setup the compiler stack; canonical uses of this format are LibTooling and clang-c.

This program is mainly used to generate a Swift Compilation Database for usage in iCompleteMe, as it requires compile_commands.json to determine how to setup the Swift compiler for code completion.

Usage

First, build and install. Optionally, use the install script:

./install.sh

tee build output of a clean build to a log, and pass the result to XCCompilationDB.

xcodebuild .... | tee /path/to/last_build.log
XCCompilationDB /path/to/last_build.log

It outputs compile_commands.json to the root of the CWD.

Notes on unstructured log parsing

There are several ways to extract this information from Xcode. XcodeCompilationDatabase is built on Xcode's unstructured logs for simplicity. Given the general stability of Xcode's log format, this approach should be somewhat maintainable.

All known approaches are less than ideal, including this one. Ideally Xcode and SwiftPM would stream a parsable log containing tool invocations, and standard error and standard out, similar to how the Swift driver does.

Alternatives

There are several other implementations of this on the internet, none of which are known to have Swift support and work in this capacity.