how to pass the user-defined macro to xcodebuild?

Question

I build my project by xcodebuild in command line. Not in xCode. I want to pass some marc to the project so that it can affect the code. Such as code below:

Answer 1

The command-line setting you used effectively set an environment variable, at least within Xcode’s build environment. But that build environment does not get passed into the compiler’s preprocessor, just as setting a shell environment variable does not make that environment variable visible in the preprocessor.

To make it visible in the preprocessor, add an entry in the Preprocessor Macros build setting for the project, or for the specific targets you want. The entry should have the form “FOO=$(FOO)”. Xcode passes this to the compiler as “-DFOO=value of FOO from environment”.

When editing the Preprocessor Macros setting, be sure you are editing it for All Configurations (or the configuration you want to set it for, if you do not want to set it for all).

Answer 2

I know this is an old post, but why not just use:

xcodebuild GCC_PREPROCESSOR_DEFINITIONS='$GCC_PREPROCESSOR_DEFINITIONS API_TYPE=1'

If you want to be able to have it optionally override an existing define in app, just code something like this:

#define DEFAULT_API_TYPE 1

#ifdef API_TYPE
  #define REAL_API_TYPE API_TYPE
#else
  #define REAL_API_TYPE DEFAULT_API_TYPE
#endif