Is it possible to sort the Compile Sources list in the Build Phases section of an Xcode project?

Question

I want to sort the files in the \'Compile Sources\' section of my Xcode project according to their names. Is it possible?

Answer 1

The accepted solution works fine, but it requires manual steps(open the project file, find the section for the target that you want etc.) so it is a little cumbersome and it can not be automated if you need to keep the section sorted each time you perform a build or commit. I faced with the same problem and I created a ruby script to sort these sections. The script sorts the 'Compile Sources', 'Copy Bundle Resources’ and all the 'Copy files' sections under Build Phase for a specified or all the targets.

#!/usr/bin/env ruby
require 'xcodeproj'
require 'set'

project_file, target_name = ARGV

# open the project
project = Xcodeproj::Project.open(project_file)

# find the target
targets_to_sort = project.native_targets.select { |x| x.name == target_name || target_name.nil? }

phases_to_sort = [Xcodeproj::Project::Object::PBXSourcesBuildPhase, Xcodeproj::Project::Object::PBXCopyFilesBuildPhase, Xcodeproj::Project::Object::PBXResourcesBuildPhase]

targets_to_sort.each do |target|
  puts "sorting files for target #{target.name}"
  phases_to_sort.each do |phase_to_sort|
    target.build_phases.select { |x| x.class == phase_to_sort }.each do |phase|
      phase.files.sort! { |l, r| l.display_name <=> r.display_name }
    end
  end
end

puts 'saving project'
project.save

To sort all targets:

./sort_sources.rb MyProject.xcodeproj

Or to sort only one target:

./sort_sources.rb MyProject.xcodeproj My_Target

It requires the gem xcodeproj:

gem install xcodeproj