It's important to test across various screen sizes, which the iOS simulator is good for, but it's also important to test on real devices where possible. I currently have an iPhone 11 Pro, an iPhone 6, and 2 iPod touches. Out of all these I find the iPod touch to be the best device for a lot of iOS development.

With WWDC 2021 just around the corner I've been thinking about what I'd like to see there.

A lot of the popular discourse around this time of year is focussed on features of the operating systems but I want to look at what I'd like to see as a developer for Apple platforms.

I love to develop for Apple platforms but it can often be a painful process. May is like a christmas for Apple developers.

When displaying an alert in SwiftUI, if the value used to calculate whether the alert is presented is both Optional and does not conform to Identifiable¹ it is often recommended to use a separate flag, similar to:

struct ContentView: View {
    @State private var alertText: String?
    @State private var isPresentingAlert = false

    var body: some View {
        Button("Show Alert") {
            self.alertText = "Alert Text"
            self.isPresentingAlert = true
        }
        .alert(isPresented: $isPresentingAlert) {
            Alert(title: Text(alertText!))
        }
    }
}

There are 2 main downsides to this:

1. alertText is not set back to nil, which may cause bugs and will increase memory usage (even if only a little in this case)
2. The isPresentingAlert flag needs to be managed

To work around these issues I create a small extension to Binding the allows this same code to be updated to:

struct ContentView: View {
    @State private var alertText: String?

    var body: some View {
        Button("Show Alert") {
            self.alertText = "Alert Text"
        }
        .alert(isPresented: $alertText.mappedToBool()) {
            Alert(title: Text(alertText!))
        }
    }
}

The extension is fairly small and simple:

import os.log
import SwiftUI

extension Binding where Value == Bool {
    /// Creates a binding by mapping an optional value to a `Bool` that is
    /// `true` when the value is non-`nil` and `false` when the value is `nil`.
    ///
    /// When the value of the produced binding is set to `false` the value
    /// of `bindingToOptional`'s `wrappedValue` is set to `nil`.
    ///
    /// Setting the value of the produce binding to `true` does nothing and
    /// will log an error.
    ///
    /// - parameter bindingToOptional: A `Binding` to an optional value, used to calculate the `wrappedValue`.
    public init<Wrapped>(mappedTo bindingToOptional: Binding<Wrapped?>) {
        self.init(
            get: { bindingToOptional.wrappedValue != nil },
            set: { newValue in
                if !newValue {
                    bindingToOptional.wrappedValue = nil
                } else {
                    os_log(
                        .error,
                        "Optional binding mapped to optional has been set to `true`, which will have no effect. Current value: %@",
                        String(describing: bindingToOptional.wrappedValue)
                    )
                }
            }
        )
    }
}

extension Binding {
    /// Returns a binding by mapping this binding's value to a `Bool` that is
    /// `true` when the value is non-`nil` and `false` when the value is `nil`.
    ///
    /// When the value of the produced binding is set to `false` this binding's value
    /// is set to `nil`.
    public func mappedToBool<Wrapped>() -> Binding<Bool> where Value == Wrapped? {
        return Binding<Bool>(mappedTo: self)
    }
}

The extension isn't tied directly to showing an alert or a sheet and can be used in any context, but this is one of the better examples of its usage.

This extension is available on GitHub under the MIT license.

¹ If it does conform to Identifiable use alert(item:content:)

The Xcode 12 beta includes Swift 5.3 but drops support for iOS 8.x. This means that Swift packages that support iOS 8 will cause a warning:

The iOS deployment target 'IPHONEOS_DEPLOYMENT_TARGET' is set to 8.0, but the range of supported deployment target versions is 9.0 to 14.0.99.

It's not possible to remove this warning within a project that depends on a Swift package with a deployment target of iOS 8, but it is possible to fix this in the dependency without removing support for iOS 8 for older versions of Swift. There are multiple way this can be accomplished.

While working on the 2.0 update for Gathered I have been trying to develop the app multiple platforms simultaneously. SwiftUI will solve this problem in the future, but I wish to support some OS versions that SwiftUI does not support.

As part of this I have been creating UI tests to test performance, but ran in to an issue when running the UI tests on macOS using Mac Catalyst:

Running tests...
The bundle “PerformanceXCTests” couldn’t be loaded because it is damaged or missing necessary resources. Try reinstalling the bundle.
(dlopen_preflight(...): no suitable image found.  Did find:
	...: code signature in (...) not valid for use in process using Library Validation: mapped file has no Team ID and is not a platform binary (signed with custom identity or adhoc?))