Integrating DSKit Into Client/Public Projects

[dcvz]

Need/problem

The reason for creating DSKit was to facilitate the development of mobile applications. In the context of Double Symmetry the mobile applications we're creating are sometimes for clients and parties who don't have access to this private repository.

Motivation

While we decide whether this repository can be or should be public / open source. It would be great to find a way to be able to embed DSKit into applications where third parties could still run the projects without getting into issues because of trying to use a private package.

Detailed design

I propose that we expose a counter repo (i.e. DSKitPublic) where we define a Swift Package that exposes a framework. This is something that Swift Package Manager (SPM) already supports.

Upon us releasing a new version here in DSKit the CI would build an .xcframework (i.e. with create-xcframework), push it to the public repository and tag it with the new version number.

This would allow us to point to the DSKitPublic repository in our projects via SPM.

Drawbacks

Some possible drawbacks would be:

• there's a level of indirection that we get from working in the private repo but using the public one in projects
• if we ever make DSKit open source, users would have to change the dependency to point to this repo instead

Alternatives

• make the project public

this is a decision that cannot yet be made as the project is not big enough.

[fabiandoublesymmetry]

Generally, this seems to be a good approach.

• It is however a major drawback, that we can developers have to use DSKit as a black box and not see the implementation details in the source code. Maybe we could solve this by having different targets. One for us, where we import the private repo and another one for Kult with the public repo 🤔
• Is the second drawback actually a drawback? We could keep the public repo without changing it anymore, right? 🤔

I am thinking of another alternative, but I don't know if it is feasible:
How is the process currently when the Kult PMs want to run the app? Maybe we could build a website from where they can download the IPA directly (signed with the Kult provisioning profile). That way we could kill two birds with one stone, because it would also help us with the quick reviews.

[dcvz]

I'd actually love to build a system where clients can just download and install builds! At that point it doesn't matter that the repository is private. Although at the moment we do not have an enterprise certificate. I guess we would need one right?

In the case of Kult however, it would be enough if we exposed to them a way for them to trigger a TestFlight build. I wonder how hard it would be to make a Slack bot or an easy way for them to trigger one. We could even have it live in our CI.

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There is one problem with this approach though. It will be a problem when we eventually need to hand off a project to a client (when we will no longer work on it) -- perhaps at that point we can embed one final framework.

[dcvz]

Actually... we don't seem to qualify for an enterprise certificate.

[fabiandoublesymmetry]

With an enterprise certificate we would be able to distribute the app and have it installed on any device whatsoever. There would be no restrictions anymore. But if we create an IPA with our current certificate, it should already work for all devices, that are registered in our account and that is in the provisioning profile. I guess we can test this easily.