Development Requirements
Last Updated 2025-03-13 UTC+8.
According to Apple's documentation and my experience, here are what we need to develop an iOS application:
| Hardware / Software / Tools | Description | Ref |
|---|---|---|
| Macbook | The most common choice of officially supported hardware for developing iOS applications. | - |
| Xcode | The official IDE for developing, testing, and distributing iOS applications. | Official Doc |
| Swift | The programming language used across the Apple platform. | Official Doc |
| Apple Developer Program | Enrol into this program for accessing resources, distributing iOS applications to App Store, and testing apps on physical devices. | Official Doc |
| Provisioning Profiles | It specifies the app info, the development team, and the devices which the app could be installed. There are different types of provisioning profiles, e.g., dev, adhoc, distribution, etc. | Official Doc |
| Certificates | It provides signing of the iOS application, where it ensures that the app is provided by a trustable source. | Official Doc |
| Simulators / iPhone / iPad / etc. | Physical or virtual devices for testing iOS applications. For physical devices, they should have been registered with the UDID for the iOS applications. | Official Doc |
| CocoaPods (Optional) | A dependency manager for Swift & Objective-C Cocoa Projects that allows us to specify the libraries and their versions in a single Podfile, as well as, download, configure, integrate, and resolve the dependencies. | Official Doc |
| Git (Optional) | Version control system for managing changes of the project code. | Official Doc |