Reducing Our Build Time by 50%
Article Summary
Gojek's iOS team was bleeding 11 minutes per build. 100 engineers, 350 daily CI pipelines, and a productivity crisis that demanded action.
The Gojek engineering team tackled their massive iOS build time problem using XCLogParser to analyze build logs, a custom Slack workflow for real-time developer feedback, and deep debugging of Xcode's build system. Their multi-repo setup with 40+ submodules made the challenge even harder.
Key Takeaways
- Cut build time from 11 minutes to 5 minutes (50% reduction) by fixing Xcode settings
- Recursive FRAMEWORK_SEARCH_PATHS caused double clean builds and wasted 15 minutes each time
- Switching simulators triggered full rebuilds until they changed CocoaPods to static frameworks
- Custom Slack bot collected micro-feedback from developers immediately after slow builds
- Saved 60 hours of developer time per week across the team
Critical Insight
Three Xcode configuration fixes (recursive search paths, inconsistent scheme settings, and CocoaPods loading) delivered a 50% build time reduction and 60 hours saved weekly.
