Scaling iOS at Bumble (Part 2)

Bumble's iOS team migrated their entire codebase to Tuist in Q2 2023, choosing it over SPM and Bazel. Here's what happened after the dust settled.

This is the final post in Bumble's three-part series on overhauling their iOS build system. After evaluating Swift Package Manager, Tuist, and Bazel, they made their choice and executed a company-wide migration.

Key Takeaways

• Reduced configuration files by 99%: from 4,000 xcconfig files down to just 39
• Tuist hit the sweet spot: familiar Swift experience without Bazel's steep learning curve
• Modularization became trivial with declarative manifests replacing cumbersome Xcode projects
• Team celebrated migration success with visit to London's Twist Museum
• SPM proved entirely unsuitable at their scale due to poor Xcode integration performance

The team learned critical lessons about what NOT to do with ProjectDescriptionHelpers that could save you from performance nightmares.