How We Improved Our iOS App Compile Time by 99%
Article Summary
Zomato's iOS team was stuck waiting 80 seconds for every incremental build. That's developer productivity bleeding out in real-time.
The Zomato engineering team documented their journey from painfully slow build times to sub-second incremental builds. They tackled everything from Xcode configuration to architectural changes across their entire iOS codebase.
Key Takeaways
- Incremental builds dropped from 80 seconds to 0.8 seconds (99% faster)
- Enabled Xcode's new build system for 80% speedup on incremental builds
- Converted third party dependencies to prebuilt dynamic frameworks
- Split bloated internal frameworks to improve build parallelization
- Bonus wins: 6MB smaller app size and 400ms faster launch times
Critical Insight
Zomato cut iOS build times by 99% through a combination of Xcode settings optimization, modular architecture, and eliminating unnecessary compilation work.
