Remote iOS building

I’m looking for a way to build for iOS remotely. Right now, I have both a PC and a Mac with Unity installed. I do all the work from the PC, and would like to run a script that would take what I’m working on (on the PC), build, and run it on a connected iPhone, without touching the Mac (unless the build fails, of course).

So far, I thought about sharing the project folder, then use Unity’s command line to build & run, but I have no idea how to remotely launch Unity. A quick googling suggests that SSH is the way to do it, but before digging further, I’d like to know how you guys are doing it.

Thanks!

With a mix of SSH and AppleScript, I was able to get it to build remotely, but it is very slow, for multiple reasons.

The files Unity uses on Windows and Mac are different, and need to be converted from one format to the other. Say you’re working on Windows, if you transfer your files to Mac, all your assets and code will be reimported/recompiled, which takes some time.

Also, just sharing your project folder won’t work as two Unity instances can’t open the same project at the same time. You need to either copy the project for your Mac build, or use a version control system, commit, then update on the Mac, before each build.

There are a few more issues, like the “run” part not always working due to a difference in how Unity treats its command line versus the actual “Build & Run” button, and some files messing with the build process if you keep Unity open on Windows before committing your files.

In the end, that solution wasn’t practical enough, but I’d be definitely interested in hearing what others came up with.