Preserve extra targets when running ns clean

[ericuldall]

I have created a new watchOS target associated with my app from xcode. Sometimes I need to run ns clean but doing so deletes my watchOS target.

How do I configure the nativscript build to preserve my watchOS code?

[rigor789]

@ericuldall you can place your extra targets in App_Resources/iOS/extensions and define the build properties in the extension.json - this will make it so after ns clean the target gets re-added automatically. The details are currently not well documented - we've recently had to deal with a similar setup, and will try to document extensions/targets very soon...

App_Resources/iOS/
  extensions/
    TestWatchOS/
      ...
      Info.plist
      extension.json

// extension.json
{
  "frameworks": [
    "WatchKit"
  ],
  "targetBuildConfigurationProperties": {
    "DEVELOPMENT_TEAM": "\"XXXXXX\"",
    "CODE_SIGN_ENTITLEMENTS": "\"$(SRCROOT)/../../App_Resources/iOS/extensions/TestWatchOS/TestWatchOS.entitlements\"",
    "CODE_SIGN_STYLE": "Automatic",
​
    "PRODUCT_BUNDLE_IDENTIFIER": "org.nativescript.app.TestWatchOS",
​
    "CLANG_ANALYZER_NONNULL": "YES",
    "CLANG_ANALYZER_NUMBER_OBJECT_CONVERSION": "YES_AGGRESSIVE",
    "CLANG_CXX_LANGUAGE_STANDARD": "\"gnu++20\"",
    "CLANG_ENABLE_OBJC_WEAK": "YES",
    "CLANG_WARN_DOCUMENTATION_COMMENTS": "YES",
    "CLANG_WARN_UNGUARDED_AVAILABILITY": "YES_AGGRESSIVE",
    "COPY_PHASE_STRIP": "NO",
    "CURRENT_PROJECT_VERSION": "1",
    "DEBUG_INFORMATION_FORMAT": "\"dwarf-with-dsym\"",
    "GCC_C_LANGUAGE_STANDARD": "gnu11",
    "GCC_WARN_UNINITIALIZED_AUTOS": "YES_AGGRESSIVE",
    "GENERATE_INFOPLIST_FILE": "YES",
    "INFOPLIST_FILE": "../../App_Resources/iOS/extensions/TestWatchOS/Info.plist",
    "INFOPLIST_KEY_CFBundleDisplayName": "TestWatchOS",
    "INFOPLIST_KEY_NSHumanReadableCopyright": "\"Copyright  2023 NativeScript. All rights reserved.\"",
    "IPHONEOS_DEPLOYMENT_TARGET": "16.4",
    "MARKETING_VERSION": "1.0",
    "MTL_ENABLE_DEBUG_INFO": "NO",
    "MTL_FAST_MATH": "YES",
    "PRODUCT_NAME": "\"$(TARGET_NAME)\"",
    "SKIP_INSTALL": "YES",
    "SUPPORTS_MACCATALYST": "YES",
    "SWIFT_COMPILATION_MODE": "wholemodule",
    "SWIFT_EMIT_LOC_STRINGS": "YES",
    "SWIFT_OPTIMIZATION_LEVEL": "\"-O\"",
    "SWIFT_VERSION": "5.0",
    "TARGETED_DEVICE_FAMILY": "\"1,2\""
  }
}

Note: this is an example extension.json - the best way to get the correct values is to:

1. open the project in XCode
2. add your extension
3. find the new target inside platforms/ios/.../yourproject.pbproject
4. manually convert those build flags to the above JSON format

---

We also plan on improving the dx/flow of this in the future, though initially we'll just focus on documenting this in detail, given it's a one-time setup thing in most cases.

[ericuldall]

Thanks for the updates. I'll try this. I'm pretty green when it comes to iOS dev so i'm not familiar with all the important details in those files. I'll do my best to piece it together from your notes above.

[rigor789]

Hey @ericuldall, just found this in the old docs: https://v7.docs.nativescript.org/tooling/ios-watch-apps

This should still work - mostly same steps as outlined above, but the directory would be App_Resources/iOS/watchapp and the json file would be watchapp.json