Should I use Xcode 6.1 beta, or Xcode 6.0 GM?

Question

I'm on OS X Yosemite (latest DP), and I can't make up my mind. The Apple developer website says that 6.0 GM is for Mavericks, and the 6.1 beta is for Yosemite. But 6.1 is still in beta, while the other is a GM version obviously. That makes me wonder... should I pick the one that matches my OS, or the one that is in a more stable version? I want to use it for actual app development, so I'm thinking the GM would be better since it's more reliable.

Solution 1

If you want to submit apps to the iOS App Store using Swift, I would go with Xcode 6 GM (as of this writing).

Apple's site is showing the following statement:

Download Xcode 6 GM seed and add new Swift code or frameworks to your existing apps, or create a brand new app using 100 percent Swift code. With the GM seed release of Xcode 6 and iOS 8, Swift 1.0 is now final, and you can build and submit your iOS apps written with Swift to the App Store today.

Swift for OS X is coming with OS X Yosemite later this fall. If you are using Swift to write Mac apps, you can download the Xcode 6.1 beta for Yosemite, which also includes the iOS 8 SDK GM seed.

Solution 2

I'm currently using XCode 6, installed from AppStore. It works fine on Mavericks. However, it has one serious problem with .sks particle files, which seems to be solved in 6.1 beta. The bottom line is this: if you have any existing particle files as .sks, XCode 6 will corrupt them, rendering them useless, and you will have to recreate them from scratch again. XCode 6 will keep crashing when you try to open those files, and the app build with XCode will also crash if you try to load particle emitters from those .sks files, as it will get confused between .sks being a scene or particle resource. More info on that here: https://stackoverflow.com/questions/25830436/cant-open-particle-sks-files

Comments

[notadam]

I ended up downloading the 6.0 GM and it works just fine. I'm developing an iOS game in Obj-C for 7.0+ so this is fine for me, I don't really need Xcode 6.1 for now. 6.0 GM also includes the brand new iPhone 6 and 6 plus simulators (with iOS 8 of course) so I can test out whether it works on those as well.

[Jeff Clayton]

That is a smart move, good choice.

[notadam]

I experienced this. I have an older project that I wanted to open, which had an .sks particle effect file in it. When I clicked that file to view it, Xcode crashed. Now whenever I open the same project, the .sks file is selected by default (since Xcode remembers which file you were working on) so it keeps crashing after opening up the project. I cannot open up that project anymore because Xcode crashes immediately if I try to do so. :(

[marni]

Same issues here. I have managed to select a different file just before the XCode crashed. Took several project re-loadings to achieve that, but once a different file is selected, the project loads OK.