Apple Releases Xcode 9.3.1 Update

Apple today released an updated version of Xcode, Xcode 9.3.1. The new version of Xcode comes over a month after the release of Xcode 9.3, which was launched alongside iOS 11.3 back in late March.

Xcode 9.3.1 is a minor bug fix update. According to Apple's release notes, it addresses an issue that could cause a user to have to log in with their Apple ID repeatedly and it fixes a bug that could cause Xcode to hang when using Playgrounds.

Xcode 9.3, the previous update, introduced a new Energy organizer designed to help developers detect when an app or app extension is using too much battery life on a user's device.

The software also brought a new 64-bit testing mode for macOS 10.13.4, which is designed to let developers test software for 64-bit compatibility as Apple prepares to start phasing out 32-bit Mac apps. As of Xcode 9.3, Xcode support for macOS 32-bit support has been depreciated.

Xcode 9.3.1 will be followed by Xcode 9.4, which is currently in beta testing. Apple has seeded two betas of Xcode 9.4 to developers thus far.

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hunt2013

9 months ago

That goodness for the fix to Playgrounds crashing. It is hard to test stuff when it crashed every 5 minutes.

Rating: 2 Votes

Reason077

9 months ago

Xcode really does crash a fair bit, doesn’t it.

Mines pretty stable so long as you stick to the code editors. But once you start messing around in Interface Builder, it can be a nightmare.

Rating: 2 Votes

tzm41

9 months ago

Finally fixed playgrounds! They're so useful and it sucks not having them.
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I go months between crashes and I use it for at least 8 hours a day. I'm not sure how so many people are getting so many crashes. The only crashes I experienced frequently were not even crashes, but rather slowdowns and unresponsiveness in the playgrounds.

I'm not saying you're lying about the crashes, I'm rather just curious on why some people experience so many of them and what the common denominator among those experiencing crashes is.

It definitely depends on the complexity of your project. It doesn't handle very large projects, or projects with a lot of RxSwift, or code that puts compiler's typer inference ability to test, very well. Also if there are some IBDesignables, IB crashes very often.
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Except, when someone is using the Apple provided lessons in App Development with Swift (which Apple is promoting as the definitive teaching solution), the student has to use playgrounds for a majority of chapters.

I'm glad Apple fixed it.
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I'm guessing here, but I'm betting this line from your signature has something to do with it: "Mac Pro (2010): 3.33Ghz Intel Xeon (6 core) - 24 GB RAM - NVidia Quadro k5000".

Before this latest bug, my 15" MacBook Pro had no issues, but my 13" MacBook Pro would hang from time to time.

For me, Xcode 9 itself probably only crashes once per week. I consider that huge improvement from 7 and 8. The crashes are mostly not due to the power of the machine though. Often times it's code editor trying to access an non existent line and causes index out of bounds, or some other cryptic crash on NSView loading frames.

IB engine crashes quite often, as well as compiler when I switch branches.

Rating: 1 Votes

tzm41

9 months ago

The Playgrounds are almost useless. Due to bugs and limitations, and I don't just mean the one they fixed, it's honestly faster in almost every case to use a fresh project.

Better yet, use React Native if you wanna quickly iterate with GUI. It's so much easier because you just write to the file, and it insta-updates so you can tweak things quickly instead of having to take forever rebuilding (Swift takes sooooo freaking long to build vs ObjC). That and the language and libraries are way easier to deal with for GUI. And I get to use Vim. Only thing is I feel dirty using Javascript.
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No, mine crashes pretty rarely now. But... rant incoming... ever since the Swift update, it's been crappy in many other ways. Builds take forever. There are not-super-rare memory leaks. I used to get tons of segfaults IN THE COMPILER while compiling, and it still happens on rare occasions if I have a syntax error in some crazy thing involving generics. The debugger's variable inspection is broken af, like to the point where I can't expect anything to work, so I use print statements instead. The code completion used to also be broken, but now it works pretty reliably but often slowly.

Btw, Swift is a decent language and quite the engineering marvel, but there are some decisions they made that I can't fathom. String manipulation is unbelievably difficult, to the point where I've relied on custom solutions. Structs are very weird to work with, and pass-by-value arrays are a "wtf" kind of surprise to newbies. Syntax is weird and unintuitive in many places, especially code blocks.

Second the part with debugger variable inspection. I never use that crap anymore.

Rating: 1 Votes

chrono1081

9 months ago

Finally fixed playgrounds! They're so useful and it sucks not having them.
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How can I crash thee, let me count the ways... Xcode crashing is basically expected for me at this point, you just never know what's going to make it crash the next time.

I go months between crashes and I use it for at least 8 hours a day. I'm not sure how so many people are getting so many crashes. The only crashes I experienced frequently were not even crashes, but rather slowdowns and unresponsiveness in the playgrounds.

I'm not saying you're lying about the crashes, I'm rather just curious on why some people experience so many of them and what the common denominator among those experiencing crashes is.

Rating: 1 Votes

Markoth

9 months ago

That goodness for the fix to Playgrounds crashing. It is hard to test stuff when it crashed every 5 minutes.

How can I crash thee, let me count the ways... Xcode crashing is basically expected for me at this point, you just never know what's going to make it crash the next time.

Rating: 1 Votes

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