Arsis Workshop

No. 10 · Open source · v0.5.1, MIT

Appothèque

A menu bar launcher for the Mac and iOS apps you are building.

Click an app: Appothèque checks your local files, builds only if something changed, then opens it.

Install

brew install --cask arsis-dev/tap/appotheque

Film21 seconds. Nothing plays until you press play.

Why

When you work on several apps at once, opening the current version of one usually means opening Xcode or a terminal, picking the scheme, building and waiting. Appothèque keeps a build recipe for each project and a fingerprint of its inputs. If nothing changed since the last successful build, the app opens immediately; otherwise it is rebuilt first.

What it does

  1. 01

    Builds only when needed. Tracked files, untracked files that Git does not ignore, uncommitted changes, lockfiles, the recipe and the selected Xcode all count.

  2. 02

    Shows what changed. The window lists the files modified, added or removed since the last successful build, next to the fingerprint of each build.

  3. 03

    Keeps the previous build. Each successful build is stored separately. The previous one stays one click away, including after a failed build.

  4. 04

    Never force-quits. When a newer build is ready, the running version is asked to quit normally, so its save dialogs still appear.

Screenshots

The Appothèque window: an app whose code changed, the fingerprints of the two builds and the files modified since the last one
Fig. 1The Appothèque window: an app whose code changed, the fingerprints of the two builds and the files modified since the last one
The launcher: favourites and apps with their state, and the selected app with its Launch button
Fig. 2The launcher: favourites and apps with their state, and the selected app with its Launch button

Elsewhere in the workshop

All 22 objects →