Starting the simulator in XCode 9 (not headless)

Question

I am trying to run both my unit and ui tests with xcodebuild like:

$ xcodebuild -scheme "MyAppScheme" -destination 'platform=iOS Simulator,name=iPhone 7 Plus,OS=11.0' build test CODE_SIGN_IDENTITY="" CODE_SIGNING_REQUIRED=NO

The problem is that the simulator doesn't start but instead is running heedlessly.

I am aware of the so called "headless simulator" introduced in XCode 9. Any ideas of how to run the tests with xcodebuild and launch the emulator ?

Answer 1

As far as I know there are no options to allow you to run the tests on a not headless Simulator.

However if a Simulator is already launched the tests will run on that Simulator instead of a headless one. So you can first launch the Simulator and then run the tests:

$ open /Applications/Xcode.app/Contents/Developer/Applications/Simulator.app && xcodebuild -scheme "MyAppScheme" -destination 'platform=iOS Simulator,name=iPhone 7 Plus,OS=11.0' build test CODE_SIGN_IDENTITY="" CODE_SIGNING_REQUIRED=NO