My Wish List for Tuist Previews

Ideas
1

I just started using Tuist Previews and I love them! I have them automatically built on CI and posted on PRs.

I understand it’s a very new feature, so of course there are rough edges. Here are some things that would make them even better for my org:

  1. When I click Run on a Tuist Preview from the web, I don’t see an indication that anything is happening. If I click the menu bar app I see that it is installing. When I click Run I’d prefer to see a dialog pop up, and I’d prefer to see a download/installation/running progress bar, along with an option to cancel.
  2. Once the preview is installed in the simulator it isn’t clear what I have installed. It would be nice if the menu bar app showed the commit of the last installed preview, at least. I’m not sure what all could be done here.
  3. I want the product and design people in my org to be able to Tuist Previews. They don’t have access to GitHub and they don’t typically work at the command line. It would be great if they could be onboarded through the macOS app (using our Google SSO) and then be able to use Tuist Previews exclusively through the web pages and macOS app.
2

Hey @hiltonc :wave:

First of all, thanks a lot for the early feedback. The feature is still in active development, so thanks for your understanding that not everything is flawless, yet.

When I click Run on a Tuist Preview from the web, I don’t see an indication that anything is happening. If I click the menu bar app I see that it is installing. When I click Run I’d prefer to see a dialog pop up, and I’d prefer to see a download/installation/running progress bar, along with an option to cancel.

I’ll see what I can do there – the issue is the download happens in the macOS app, so the web page doesn’t know about progress or anything. But I hear you loud and clear on this one.

Once the preview is installed in the simulator it isn’t clear what I have installed. It would be nice if the menu bar app showed the commit of the last installed preview, at least. I’m not sure what all could be done here.

I’ll think about what to do there. We could definitely have a label such as Installed fe15c03 in the macOS app instead of falling back to Ready. Would that be sufficient for you?

I want the product and design people in my org to be able to Tuist Previews. They don’t have access to GitHub and they don’t typically work at the command line. It would be great if they could be onboarded through the macOS app (using our Google SSO) and then be able to use Tuist Previews exclusively through the web pages and macOS app.

The macOS app is currently only usable if you have Xcode installed. I assume that’s not the case for your design and product colleagues? But the intention is to remove the dependency on the command line for authenticating in the macOS app, we plan to get on that next week. However, removing the requirement of Xcode will be a bit more complicated. I think it should be possible to install an .ipa from macOS to an iOS device, but you can’t do that for .app afaik.

If using the macOS app to install .ipa builds on devices would be useful for your design and product colleagues, we can prioritize looking into it :pray:

Right now, if you don’t have the macOS app or the Tuist CLI, the best way to install a preview on your device is to open the page in the mobile browser (either going directly there or you can use the QR code). This flow should already be usable for your product & design teammates.

3

Could the macOS app could show a dialog in the middle of the screen with the progress?

Yes, I think that would be helpful. Just brainstorming here, but it would also be nice to see that in the app on the simulator itself. That might need a Tuist library built into the app though?

I’d be OK with requiring them to install Xcode so that they have a simulator for testing. Ideally they could install to device, but I think we can’t do that without an Apple Enterprise account, right?

4

Here’s some additional feedback by Anton Smolianin

5

Could the macOS app could show a dialog in the middle of the screen with the progress?

I wonder if that would feel too intrusive. I’d like to see if we can force the menu bar to appear instead of opening a new window. But I’ll be considering both options.

Yes, I think that would be helpful. Just brainstorming here, but it would also be nice to see that in the app on the simulator itself. That might need a Tuist library built into the app though?

Yes, we would need a library. I think developing a library would make sense down the line primarily for auto-updating functionality but it’s not something we aim at doing in the next couple of weeks.

What you can do now is to add a label to the icon when building the app on the CI – this doesn’t necessarily require any Tuist changes. However, it would be nice to have labeling built-in.

Ideally they could install to device, but I think we can’t do that without an Apple Enterprise account, right?

They can install on the device if the app is signed and their device was included in the provisioning profile that was used for signing.

To install an app directly from a device, you need to share an .ipa. Signed .app bundles can be installed only using the macOS app.

Here’s some additional feedback by Anton Smolianin

Thanks @pepicrft for passing that along! I agree support brew install --cask would make sense :+1: