Xcode 9 is Unacceptable

EDIT: This post was suspended by forum moderation for unknown reasons around 2 weeks. And now (2017-12-15) activated again with original content unchanged.

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I do not know where to start but Xcode 9 is a total mess, with countless bugs and performance issues.

I myself reported 7 bugs so far, and there are many more to report. But I gave up.

Why did I give up? Because I started to feel Apple does not care about us, the Developer Community, at all.

For Apple, the Developer Community is nothing more than some impressive numbers to be stated in their fancy Keynotes and blog posts.


Xcode 9 is a joke, it should not have been released at all.

Actually, it is worse than a joke, it is an insult.

Tens of thousands of developers working hard to make apps and giving life to the App Store ecosystem.

But nowadays, most of them are busy with dealing ridiculous Xcode 9 problems, instead of working on their own products.

Why? Because some people at Apple are so dedicated to ruin existing products, instead of improving them.

They choose to spend their time, money and energy on making useless stuff and creating more problems.

And they feel no shame about releasing underdeveloped and undertested products.


Apple's software quality is constantly degrading, especially last few years.

I am sure I am not the only one who can see this fact.

Along with iOS, any Apple operating system, web service or other kind of software product have unacceptable amount of problems.

From the end user viewpoint, these might be simple problems they encounter occasionally. Maybe they do not notice at all.

But from the developers viewpoint, this is serious. This is making our jobs less funny and more painful, as well as costing us time and money constantly.


Today, Apple is one of the most succesful companies in the world.

Anyone in the business clearly knows, Apple would not be at this point without iPhone.

And iPhone would be nothing without the App Store, and the App Store would be nothing without the Developer Community.


So, we want our voices to be heard.

We want people at Apple to know that they are failing their jobs and we are getting sick of this.


People at Apple!

Please show some respect to the Developer Community, and start fixing things without creating more problems.

Stop biting off more than you could chew. Develop more elaborately, and do more comprehensive testing on products before you release them.


Best regards,

E

Replies

> I myself reported 7 bugs so far, and there are many more to report. But I gave up.


Can you please write the bugs you found out?

I am using a few different developer accounts.

So, my bug reports are scattered among them.

But some of the reports:


34568927

Xcode 9 - Comparison View scrolling issues


34569033

Xcode 9 - Code folding does not work for some brackets


34652414

Xcode 9 - Warnings Not Disappearing


34707213

Xcode 9 - Document Items menu is laggy


34652506

Xcode 9 - Newly added files not added/staged for git

I completely agree.

Xcode GMs were of deteriorating quality over last few years. But Xcode 9 brings it to next level.

I understand that many developers can have pleasant experience with it. But I know many others (hence: "we" is justified) that experience serious negative impact.

I'd guess that many devs who do not complain are working on pure-swift project with relatively small codebase. And on the other hand, many devs working on big projects with huge codebases, that combine swift and obj-c, include plenty of external dependencies, etc, do experience issues that make them almost unproductive (and this is for projects that are completely fine under Xcode 8!).


Some of the issues I experience with latest Xcode:

- Compiler often segfaults over simple typos.

- Autocompletion doesn't work (moreover: it is just a nuisance, as it autocompletes anything I write by suggesting strings coming only from assets!).

- Code highlighting works only if you are not writing any code.

- Jumping to declaration works only with highlighting (so rarely)

- LLDB crashes


This list is not exhaustive. Give me 2 minutes in Xcode and I can experience all of them - I'm really not exaggerating here. That's how my daily work looks like since Xcode 9 release.

Don't get me wrong, but just because you are sipping your ******** laying down at a Caribbean beach on a shiny day, it does not mean the world is a perfect place.


I wish I could share the pleasure with you.


By, "we" , for at least, I mean five of my friends and co-workers.

But I am pretty sure there are some other people who share the same teribble experience.


I never said these are showstoppers. We can still work, but it is kinda walking in the mud.

Things you call "minor irritations" are costing us time and energy, makes us feel tired much more quickly.

I am not going to list all the issues here one by one.

Just search for xcode9 on stackoverflow and see yourself that most of them not fixed since beta.


I have played enough with embedded systems, since the times you need to wait for a few weeks just to get a Z80.

Maybe you are right, I should give them a try again 🙂

Thank god! I knew it, we are not alone 😀

I noticed as well the problem with jump to definition:

h ttps://forums.developer.apple.com/thread/88705


So that probably means there's some bug here (XCode 9.1ß)

Well, I am a developer who's working on a pure Swift pet project with a relatively small codebase in the spare time, and I am experiencing all of the issues that you mentioned. Hence, I am not even using pods. To be more productive, I had to switch to the AppCode to edit the code and to use Xcode purely for debugging and interface building.


And what's makes the situation worse, Xcode 9.1 Beta doesn't resolve the issue of constant crashing of Swift compiler on literally ANY mistype.


I am actually curious what is the "safe path" or a "comfort zone project" for Xcode 9 which makes it work like a charm 🙂

How Apple can ignore such an important dev tool is beyond me

Totally agree. Xcode9 and safari are making my work more stressful.

We're also experiencing all of the issues listed above in our team. It's exhausting.

I can conform problems with Xcode. Sometimes Xcode stucks in the build process and I have to restart the system. It seems to be a problem with the new file systems.


Furthermore I'm missing code block folding in Xcode 9. It's only possible to fold methods with the Xcode menu. For me, code block folding was very usefull to get a better overview for a code review.


Unfortunately, High Sierra has many problems. Tthe Spotlight API devlivers uncomplete results and the Social API is not working any more. So we have to find workarounds for our previously working app.

100% agree! XCode 9, it's a disaster.

A bug among many others: Add a file by drag drop -> The file not added to compile sources!!!

I totally agree with you! XCode seems to has a huge memory leak. In Activity Manager I saw that XCode is using 44 GB Memory at all and OSX wants me to close other programms.


I also have the issue that the Filetree is ultra slow. If you remove a file from a project which was used before and had a compile error, the error is stil visible even if you recompile your code.

Also had issues with the storyboard...

A friend of mine told me a few years ago "try to avoid using the XCode GM or the fresh released version...", now I know why he gave me this advise.

Unfortunately this time I had to use the new Version that early because of the UINavigationBar changes…. My self defined Backbutton Image wasn’t placed like in iOS 10.

I felt the same pains - as you can see many have been reporting Xcode 9 at least IDE issues in this forum "Apple Developer Forums / Xcode / Xcode IDE and Editor".


So wonder how Apple can continue not to respond and try to address this issue asap?

I feel the same. The deterioration is a result of the yearly release software cycle which Apple self-imposed a couple of years ago. Given that the system will continue to increase their complexity year-over-year (and thanks to the completely unnecessary invention of yet another language, but don't get me started on that), I'm pretty sure that things will continue to go downhill.


I'm afraid no one outside of Apple can stop this trend. So yes, we're doomed. Use the stable versions as long as you can (i.e. 8.3.x is looking pretty good to me as long as you don't mix it with 9).