Xcode 4 project: utility to clean up pbxproj file?

Question

I have an Xcode 4 project with 2 targets, one for iPhone and one for iPad. If I click on the iPad target and try to go to Build Settings Xcode 4 crashes:

Answer 1

In case you also tried the remove (null) reference lines and deleting the user-specific .xcuserdatad folder, and those did not work, here is a potential solution. FYI... This was experienced on Xcode 7.3.1 .

Here is the scenario I faced:

I experienced this issue that was triggered by having "twin" branches in a git repo... (i.e. one branch BRANCH_A is a development branch with some features not due for release, and another that had the same commits except for the new features, call it BRANCH_B).

The development work flow is as follows: start with BRANCH_B, create a commit branch CHANGE_C, make changes and commit, then checkout BRANCH_A, create a commit branch, then cherry-pick changes from CHANGE_C. BRANCH_A is tracking BRANCH_B in this way, with its additional feature files.

In my case, (for some reason during rebasing on co-worker changes from the remote that BRANCH_B tracks, the project file for BRANCH_B got corrupted.

In this case, the solution is to save a copy of the project file for BRANCH_A (which is good and compiles), then checkout BRANCH_B, and replace its project file with the copy.

Initially, it will not compile, until all references to the feature files (from BRANCH_A) are removed from Target's Build Phases > Compile Sources.

Works great.