Optimizing your build times

Including your dependencies (like CocoaPods) in your repository can speed up your builds. Once the git clone of your repository is done, everything will be in place to do your build.

For example, in case of CocoaPods, you can delete the CocoaPods Install step from your workflow if you include your Pods directory and the CocoaPods generated .xcworkspace file in your repository.

The use of caching can also help to speed up your builds: we offer build caching and dependency caching, as well as remote build caching for specific platforms. The efficiency of caching depends on the size of the files you want to cache, as well as on the number of files you want to cache. Read more: Caching.

All Xcode Steps at Bitrise have an option called Do a clean Xcode build…?. With this option, you can tell the Step whether to perform a full, completely clean build of your Xcode project when it runs, or alternatively, to access the cache of previous Xcode Steps in the same Workflow.

Setting this option to no can speed up your build by reducing the compilation time of the Step. However, if you have only one Xcode Step - for example, Xcode Archive & Export for iOS - in your Workflow, that one Step will always have to do a clean Xcode build.

Please note that this option does NOT mean that the Step can access the build cache of different builds. This option is only relevant if you have several Xcode Steps in the same Workflow.