build instructions for IOS version, with latest Xcode and IOS and Mac OS versions?

[nradonic]

I tried to build the PHYPHOX-IOS project locally on my Mac and it broke in Xcode on the the versions of JXLS. But there were settings like IOS target at 12 that I moved up to 18, but then a bunch of deprecated issues at IOS 13 came up as warnings, and at least one ALLOC error in the systype.h file in JXLS.

Here are some samples:

.../source/phyphox-ios/phyphox-iOS/JXLS/External/xlslib/xlslib/src/xlslib/recdef.h:224: warning: TODO: Create a constructor that gets user-defined arguments that specify the appearence
.../source/phyphox-ios/phyphox-iOS/JXLS/External/xlslib/xlslib/src/xlslib.h:70: warning: TODO: remove? use? reserved for future use?)
.../source/phyphox-ios/phyphox-iOS/JXLS/External/xlslib/xlslib/src/common/systype.h:101: error: ERROR: Invalid allocator option
.../source/phyphox-ios/phyphox-iOS/ZipZap/ZipZap/ZZInflateInputStream.m:47: warning: TODO: reference some kind of error
.../source/phyphox-ios/phyphox-iOS/ZipZap/ZipZap/ZZInflateInputStream.m:135: warning: TODO: need to handle Z_DATA_ERROR etc.
.../source/phyphox-ios/phyphox-iOS/phyphox/UI/MainView/ExperimentsCollectionViewController.swift:783: warning: TODO: Replace all instances of Data(contentsOf:...) with non-blocking requests
.../source/phyphox-ios/phyphox-iOS/phyphox/Experiments/Analysis/Modules/Abstract/ExperimentComplexUpdateValueAnalysis.swift:11: warning: TODO: Should be an enum
Command PhaseScriptExecution emitted errors but did not return a nonzero exit code to indicate failure

Is there an up to date build version and instructions?

[Staacks]

Sorry, building the iOS version is indeed a bit messy due to our very slow release cycle (1½ coders working on the Android and iOS version plus trying to avoid interruptions for teachers). Apple deprecates and updates iOS at about the same rate as we release the app, so many dependencies and settings have to be fixed every single time.

That being said, there are a few more issues here, one of which is an oversight on my behalf:

• Let's start with the oversight. Usually on release I merge the current development branch into master, so that it matches the current App Store version. Unfortunately, we had to rush the last release to address a bug and policy change regarding access to the pressure sensor in iOS 17.4 and it seems like I have forgotten the merge when we caught up with the Android version. Long story short: The master version is even more outdated than usual and the App Store version is actually commit 137f893.
• Our policy has been to be as backwards compatible as possible to support education especially in underfunded schools. So, our last version was still targeting iOS 12 and was build with XCode 15.x. However, there still should be no need to increase the iOS target or the minimum deployment at this moment. XCode 16.2 does not offer 12.0 in the dropdown but I just checked out a clean copy of commit 137f893 (with recursive checkout of subrepos) and it builds just fine (except for Zipzap - see next item in the list). I am a bit surprised to now find that XCode 16 (September 2024) still officially supported iOS 12 as a deployment target and then 16.1 seems to have dropped it. I never noticed, because iOS 12 versions are building just fine even with XCode 16.2 and I never got a warning during development. So I have the impression that iOS 12 support is quietly sneaking out the backdoor at the moment (testing has become a pain even in XCode 15 already). Anyhow, I also tried building for iOS 18 only (increasing minimum deployment and deployment target) and still had no issues. (And yes, we will face a bunch of deprecation issues soon.)
• Zipzap is the only thing I actually had to change as its minimum deployment had to be increased to 12. Unfortunately, Zipzap has not been maintained for a long time. We will have to either fork it to reflect that little change in the build settings or replace it with something modern.

So, in total, using XCode 16.2, I did the following to build phyphox:

git clone --recurse-submodules -j8 https://github.com/phyphox/phyphox-ios.git
cd phyphox-ios
git reset --hard 137f893

Then open the project in XCode 16.2. In the Project navigator look for the Frameworks folder and click on Zipzap. In Targets click on "ZipZap (iOS Framework)" and change "Minimum Deployments" to 12.0 (or 18.0 if you prefer - worked for me, too, when phyphox targets 18.0). Then make sure that phyphox is selected as build target (careful - I think for me "phyphox screenshots" was selected by default, which is just a helper top automate screenshots for the App Store) and build it.

Does this cause errors for you?

[nradonic]

Sebastion Thanks for the response. I do very little Xcode work, and find it a moving target. Not sure I’ve ever found a repository up to date with the evolving Xcode release. I expect to try it in the next few days. Thinking of a few specific UI changes I’d like to suggest if I can work them out, but we’ll see. Nick

…

On Feb 3, 2025, at 9:28 AM, Sebastian Staacks ***@***.***> wrote: Sorry, building the iOS version is indeed a bit messy due to our very slow release cycle (1½ coders working on the Android and iOS version plus trying to avoid interruptions for teachers). Apple deprecates and updates iOS at about the same rate as we release the app, so many dependencies and settings have to be fixed every single time. That being said, there are a few more issues here, one of which is an oversight on my behalf: Let's start with the oversight. Usually on release I merge the current development branch into master, so that it matches the current App Store version. Unfortunately, we had to rush the last release to address a bug and policy change regarding access to the pressure sensor in iOS 17.4 and it seems like I have forgotten the merge when we caught up with the Android version. Long story short: The master version is even more outdated than usual and the App Store version is actually commit 137f893 <137f893>. Our policy has been to be as backwards compatible as possible to support education especially in underfunded schools. So, our last version was still targeting iOS 12 and was build with XCode 15.x. However, there still should be no need to increase the iOS target or the minimum deployment at this moment. XCode 16.2 does not offer 12.0 in the dropdown but I just checked out a clean copy of commit 137f893 <137f893> (with recursive checkout of subrepos) and it builds just fine (except for Zipzap - see next item in the list). I am a bit surprised to now find that XCode 16 (September 2024) still officially supported iOS 12 as a deployment target and then 16.1 seems to have dropped it. I never noticed, because iOS 12 versions are building just fine even with XCode 16.2 and I never got a warning during development. So I have the impression that iOS 12 support is quietly sneaking out the backdoor at the moment (testing has become a pain even in XCode 15 already). Anyhow, I also tried building for iOS 18 only (increasing minimum deployment and deployment target) and still had no issues. (And yes, we will face a bunch of deprecation issues soon.) Zipzap is the only thing I actually had to change as its minimum deployment had to be increased to 12. Unfortunately, Zipzap has not been maintained for a long time. We will have to either fork it to reflect that little change in the build settings or replace it with something modern. So, in total, using XCode 16.2, I did the following to build phyphox: git clone --recurse-submodules -j8 https://github.com/phyphox/phyphox-ios.git cd phyphox-ios git reset --hard 137f893 Then open the project in XCode 16.2. In the Project navigator look for the Frameworks folder and click on Zipzap. In Targets click on "ZipZap (iOS Framework)" and change "Minimum Deployments" to 12.0 (or 18.0 if you prefer - worked for me, too, when phyphox targets 18.0). Then make sure that phyphox is selected as build target (careful - I think for me "phyphox screenshots" was selected by default, which is just a helper top automate screenshots for the App Store) and build it. Does this cause errors for you? — Reply to this email directly, view it on GitHub <#20 (comment)>, or unsubscribe <https://github.com/notifications/unsubscribe-auth/AAHODD4JKOKB5FJIG3TU6QL2N54HRAVCNFSM6AAAAABWLBTSZSVHI2DSMVQWIX3LMV43OSLTON2WKQ3PNVWWK3TUHMZDMMZRGE2TONRZGE>. You are receiving this because you authored the thread.

[Staacks]

Yes, XCode is some piece of work... I wish I could just use something else to create iOS apps... (or at least have it run on my Linux machines, but that's a different topic)

Looking forward to your input. However, before you spend too much time implementing some UI changes, it might be worth discussing them first as there are three things that might make some changes more difficult than you might anticipate:

• The first port of phyphox was done in 2015, so many parts of the interface are done old-school by calculating screen coordinates. Apple has introduced several new UI coding paradigms since then, but as we are (proudly) still iOS 12 compatible, not a single interface has yet been done in Swift UI. (Some part of me is looking forward to be able to use it once Apple forces us to drop iOS 12 support, tough).
• We keep Android and iOS versions the same within reasonable limits. Imagine a teacher who has to write a work sheet for a class in which students use their own phones. On such a worksheet you want to limit the number of instructions that have to be split between Android an iOS users. We make an exception for very typical design patterns of each OS (for example, the + menu is a floating action button on Android, but a navigation bar button on iOS) to account for the student's UI habits, but in many cases any suggested change will have to wait until we found the time to also implement it on Android.
• We have to consider the trade-off between invalidating existing teaching materials and the advantages of new interfaces. Again, imagine a teacher who does a particular phyphox experiment once a year. He/she probably put time into a worksheet for the students and won't be happy if the instructions and screenshots need to be updated everytime the worksheet is used. That being said, I don't mind changing the look of things as long as old isntructions and screenshots remain "understandable". But if interface patterns change, they should be a significant improvement or they will have to wait until they can be done as a part of another significant change.

By the way, this only applies to the basic app interfaces. The individual interfaces of the experiments are not defined in this repository but by the XML files in https://github.com/phyphox/phyphox-experiments. Good news is that these are shared between Android and iOS. Bad news is that they are limited to the features we implemented for our file format. If you were looking into something like using a slider for the tone generator's frequency or a dropdown for the number of data points in FFT spectrums: We are currently working on those (see development branch).

(Sorry, hope this is not too off-putting. I really wish there were more community contributions to phyphox as we can really use the coding support. Just want to avoid that you run into these issues after spending time on some implementation.)

[nradonic]

Sebastion Tried the update this morning. The update seems to have cleared up many issues. The remaining issue seems to be some configuration problem on my part (limited experience with Xcode) Here are a couple of screen shots, if you could suggest anything. Nick  

…

On Feb 3, 2025, at 9:28 AM, Sebastian Staacks ***@***.***> wrote: Sorry, building the iOS version is indeed a bit messy due to our very slow release cycle (1½ coders working on the Android and iOS version plus trying to avoid interruptions for teachers). Apple deprecates and updates iOS at about the same rate as we release the app, so many dependencies and settings have to be fixed every single time. That being said, there are a few more issues here, one of which is an oversight on my behalf: Let's start with the oversight. Usually on release I merge the current development branch into master, so that it matches the current App Store version. Unfortunately, we had to rush the last release to address a bug and policy change regarding access to the pressure sensor in iOS 17.4 and it seems like I have forgotten the merge when we caught up with the Android version. Long story short: The master version is even more outdated than usual and the App Store version is actually commit 137f893 <137f893>. Our policy has been to be as backwards compatible as possible to support education especially in underfunded schools. So, our last version was still targeting iOS 12 and was build with XCode 15.x. However, there still should be no need to increase the iOS target or the minimum deployment at this moment. XCode 16.2 does not offer 12.0 in the dropdown but I just checked out a clean copy of commit 137f893 <137f893> (with recursive checkout of subrepos) and it builds just fine (except for Zipzap - see next item in the list). I am a bit surprised to now find that XCode 16 (September 2024) still officially supported iOS 12 as a deployment target and then 16.1 seems to have dropped it. I never noticed, because iOS 12 versions are building just fine even with XCode 16.2 and I never got a warning during development. So I have the impression that iOS 12 support is quietly sneaking out the backdoor at the moment (testing has become a pain even in XCode 15 already). Anyhow, I also tried building for iOS 18 only (increasing minimum deployment and deployment target) and still had no issues. (And yes, we will face a bunch of deprecation issues soon.) Zipzap is the only thing I actually had to change as its minimum deployment had to be increased to 12. Unfortunately, Zipzap has not been maintained for a long time. We will have to either fork it to reflect that little change in the build settings or replace it with something modern. So, in total, using XCode 16.2, I did the following to build phyphox: git clone --recurse-submodules -j8 https://github.com/phyphox/phyphox-ios.git cd phyphox-ios git reset --hard 137f893 Then open the project in XCode 16.2. In the Project navigator look for the Frameworks folder and click on Zipzap. In Targets click on "ZipZap (iOS Framework)" and change "Minimum Deployments" to 12.0 (or 18.0 if you prefer - worked for me, too, when phyphox targets 18.0). Then make sure that phyphox is selected as build target (careful - I think for me "phyphox screenshots" was selected by default, which is just a helper top automate screenshots for the App Store) and build it. Does this cause errors for you? — Reply to this email directly, view it on GitHub <#20 (comment)>, or unsubscribe <https://github.com/notifications/unsubscribe-auth/AAHODD4JKOKB5FJIG3TU6QL2N54HRAVCNFSM6AAAAABWLBTSZSVHI2DSMVQWIX3LMV43OSLTON2WKQ3PNVWWK3TUHMZDMMZRGE2TONRZGE>. You are receiving this because you authored the thread.

[Staacks]

Sorry, but I cannot see the screenshots. Maybe this happens because you are answering to this issue via email (i.e. answering to the notifications that you get from github and github then puts your answer in the issue thread)? You want to try uploading them to the issue directly on github.

[nradonic]

Sebastian Sorry. Yes, the default image attachment size is ’small’. Nick

On Feb 10, 2025, at 3:06 AM, Sebastian Staacks ***@***.***> wrote: Sorry, but I cannot see the screenshots. Maybe this happens because you are answering to this issue via email (i.e. answering to the notifications that you get from github and github then puts your answer in the issue thread)? You want to try uploading them to the issue directly on github. — Reply to this email directly, view it on GitHub <#20 (comment)>, or unsubscribe <https://github.com/notifications/unsubscribe-auth/AAHODD7V4A4RAY27RBKG4X32PBMXXAVCNFSM6AAAAABWLBTSZSVHI2DSMVQWIX3LMV43OSLTON2WKQ3PNVWWK3TUHMZDMNBXGIYTCMJVGI>. You are receiving this because you authored the thread.

 

[Staacks]

Sorry, I think you misunderstand what I meant. You are not writing emails to me. You are writing emails to a function address at github.com which posts your them on your behalf at #20. But this method does not seem to forward images, so you either need to go to #20 and post them directly or send the emails to my email address and not to github.

[nradonic]

[nradonic]

Sebastian:

Images posted.

[Staacks]

Ah, I see. You are building "phyphox screenshots", not "phyphox". You can change this at the top, right to the left of where you select which phone or simulator to run on.

However, the error comes from the custom build script, which is just there to increment the build number and define a few tags of things that should be shown as error. Both parts are not really necessary (and the latter actually shows an error that is only part of a not-taken preprocessor directive). I am not sure right now why it does not work on your system. It looks to me that you are seeing an error that the "$buildNumber + 1" calculation fails, but the reason seems to be that you get a warning earlier. Might be related to building the screenshot version without ever building the normal version, but I don't really think so...

Anyhow, in order to get it running, you can just remove the script as it is just for convenience for automatic build numbers. click on phyphox in the project navigator, then select phyphox in the left column under "targets" and then at the top select the "Build Phases" tab. In there expand "Run Script" and just remove the entire thing.

(And I now have to remember to clean this script up or modernize it. This is as old as phyphox.)

[nradonic]

Xcode: Menu:Product:Scheme:ZipZap (Framework)

Thanks

[Staacks]

Not sure what I should see in this screenshot...? You have to select phyphox here (bottom of the list) instead of "phyphox screenshot" as before. No need to build ZipZap directly.

[nradonic]

Switched target to iOS 15
iPhone 12 - compiles and runs
iPhone 7 / iOS 15.8 - compiles loads, dies at startup screen "RWTHAACHEN UNIVERSITY" page

dyld[1006]: Symbol not found: (__ZNSt3__122__libcpp_verbose_abortEPKcz)
Referenced from: '/private/var/containers/Bundle/Application/47104606-55BB-4D5B-B141-C9647D2FBDCF/phyphox.app/phyphox.debug.dylib'
Expected in: '/usr/lib/libc++.1.dylib'

I'll work with the '12', but was wondering about the '7'

Nick

[nradonic]

Got it working. Had the JXLSiOS minimum deployment as 18. Reduced it to 15.

Thanks

[Staacks]

Glad you got it running. I am wondering why 18 did not work, though (for the iPhone 12 I mean). Will have to look into that eventually.