Using fastlane to increment version numbers in xcconfig files

If you are using fastlane to automate your release process, you might be using the increment_version_number and increment_build_number actions to bump your version and build numbers, respectively. However, if your Xcode project is configured to use xcconfig files, then you are out of luck. Shockingly, fastlane does not seem to support projects that use xcconfig files and there is a surprising dearth of information online about how to make fastlane work with Xcode build configuration files.

To workaround this limitation, I wrote some custom lanes similar to increment_version_number that work with xcconfig files. Thankfully, Sergii Ovcharenko wrote a fastlane plugin, fastlane-plugin-xcconfig, that makes reading and writing key-value pairs to xcconfig files easy. After adding this plugin to your project, you can add the following lanes to your Fastfile.

desc 'Increments major app version'
lane :version_bump_major do
    version_bump("major")
end

desc 'Increments minor app version'
lane :version_bump_minor do
    version_bump("minor")
end

desc 'Increments patch app version'
lane :version_bump_patch do
    version_bump("patch")
end

def version_bump(type)
    file_path = 'Path/To/Your/App.xcconfig'
    version_key = 'MARKETING_VERSION'
    current_version = get_xcconfig_value(
      path: file_path,
      name: version_key
    )
    puts "Current Version: #{current_version}"
    puts "Version Bump: #{type}"

    components = current_version.split('.')
    major = components[0].to_i
    minor = components[1].to_i
    patch = components[2].to_i

    if type == "major"
      major += 1
      minor = 0
      patch = 0
    elsif type == "minor"
      minor += 1
      patch = 0
    elsif type == "patch"
      patch += 1
    else
      abort("Unknown version bump type: #{type}\nValid options: major, minor, patch.")
    end

    new_version = [major, minor, patch].join('.')
    puts "New Version: #{new_version}"

    update_xcconfig_value(
      path: file_path,
      name: version_key,
      value: new_version
    )
end

You can incorporate the code above into your existing lanes or workflows, or you can invoke the lanes directly. As an example, consider a current version number of 1.31.2. These lanes will produce the following results.

[bundle exec] fastlane version_bump_major
# => 2.0.0

[bundle exec] fastlane version_bump_minor
# => 1.32.0

[bundle exec] fastlane version_bump_patch
# => 1.31.3

For the project I’m working on, we use our CI service (Bitrise) to set the build number for our app. (That is, we set it to BITRISE_BUILD_NUMBER.) However, if you would like to use fastlane for build numbers as well, you can write something very similar to the above but modify the value for CURRENT_PROJECT_VERSION instead. I’ll leave that as an exercise for the reader.

Using fastlane to increment version numbers in xcconfig files

28 March 2022