Why am I getting ibtool failed with exit code 255?

Question

All of a sudden I can\'t build my project. I get the following compiler error:

/Applications/Xcode.app/Contents/Developer/Platforms/iPhoneSimulator.pl

Answer 1

This will be irrelevant for those who had experienced the problem in the past... But with the WatchKit Framework, I had this error come up. All I did was delete a segue which I had linked between two WKInterface Controllers, and the build succeeded.

Answer 2

What you should do if you're stuck is, in a shell: ibtool --warnings --errors --notices yourfile.xib > alerts.plist

which will crash, but now you have the crashlog, in my case it was an issue with simulated metrics:

localhost:Classes me$ ibtool --warnings --errors --notices CodeViewController.xib > alerts.plist 2014-04-25 17:40:48.625 ibtoold[11691:507] [MT] DVTAssertions: ASSERTION FAILURE in /SourceCache/IDEInterfaceBuilderCocoaTouch/IDEInterfaceBuilderCocoaTouch-5038/InterfaceBuilder/WidgetIntegration/SimulatedMetrics/IBUISimulatedSizeMetrics.m:33 Details: (initialTargetRuntime) should not be nil. Object: Method: -initWithTargetRuntime: Thread: {name = (null), num = 1} Hints: None

So in my case I opened the xib as source via context menu and removed the metrics objects. It depends on the error what to remove or change. Try ibtool again and if it doesn't crash you're good.

Background: The reason for this error is generic, it can always happen with different specs changing from iOS xcode version to version, mostly if you haven't checked your projects periodically with xcode updates.

Answer 3

I had this bug because I rewrote a <view> to <imageView> while editing the storyboard as source code.

I thought this quick-and-dirty solution would work for replacing some custom classes (subclass of UIView) with UIImageViews.

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All praise GIT.

Answer 4

Try to find all XIB files in project and open it. One of them will most likely crash your Xcode.

My problem was custom fonts in some XIB file.

I had to install missing fonts on my computer and problem was solved.

Answer 5

This started to happen to me when I installed and started using XCode 9 betas. When I started modifying good projects in 8.3, the storyboards got corrupted with this error and XCode crashed. I had XCode 7.x, 8.3 and 9 installed on my computer. I uninstalled all of them (and removed all related files) and then reinstalled 8.3 from the App Store. My project storyboards were still corrupted, but I was able to recover from backup and now things are just fine as I proceed.
Not sure if this is 9 beta related or not.

Answer 6

Got this just now with XCode 8.3.

For me, I just quit XCode, then cleaned the app and rebuilt. It was fine after that.

The cause for me was adding new string files for a localized storyboard.