Aral Balkan

If you just updated to Xcode 3.2.5 and iOS SDK 4.2, you might find that your existing projects do not compile. This probably doesn't surprise you as it's been the way for every SDK update as far back as the beginning of time (at least in the Jobsian calendar). Thankfully, with Xcode 3.2.5, you can set your base SDK once and for all and it should work for all future releases.

But first things, first, here's the error I received while trying to compile one of the early projects from my iOS SDK workshop: "error: there is no SDK with the name or path 'iphoneos4.1'"

Also, when I looked under the Overview drop-down in Xcode, I noticed that the settings there were entirely wrong:

To fix the Base SDK Missing error (once and for all), I opened up the Project Settings (Project &rarrow; Edit Project Settings) and, under the Build tab, set the Base SDK setting to "Latest iOS (currently set to iOS 4.2)".

Closing the Project Settings, however, did not update the Overview drop-down and I could only build for the device, not the simulator.

To fix this, I had to restart Xcode.

Update: You don't have to restart Xcode: closing the project and reopening it also fixes it. Thanks to Amar Kulo for the heads up.

After restarting Xcode, the Overview drop-down displayed the correct information and I was up and running again.

I hope this helps you if you encounter the same issue after upgrading to Xcode 3.2.5 and iOS SDK 4.2.

Happy coding!

Update: The core frameworks will also appear to be missing initially. This, too, will be fixed after you re-open the project so don't go through the effort of re-importing them.

Update: Also, if in 4.1, you added the iOS SDK 4.1 workaround for the CGPDFContext.h:60:23: error: expected function body after function declarator error, you need to remove this or you will get a warning: '__IPHONE_OS_VERSION_MIN_REQUIRED' macro redefined.

If you get this warning, check whether you added the -D__IPHONE_OS_VERSION_MIN_REQUIRED=040100 flag to the Other C Flags in Project Settings or whether you added the two defines listed in my blog post, above, in the Prefix.pch file for your project. Remove the flag and/or the defines to remove the warning.

Update: I also had thousands of warnings on a project that uses the Google Toolbox for Mac HTTP Fetcher and had the -Xclang -fobjc-nonfragile-abi2 flag set in the project (this allows you to skip @synthesize statements and implicitly creates the, umm, implicit accessors). Removing the compiler flag removed the 20,000 or so warnings also. For the record, I consider this a WIN.

Comments

• That is really entrepreneurship project statement for everyone.And definitely this article and info is teaching to us industrial courtesy.

  by NO3 rush on 2010-11-26 09:52:25

• Thanks for the tip Aral - I fixed my project, without about 6 subprojects included, by going through every project and build target and checking the base SDK set for each. It took about three passes through the whole lot but finally I have the ability to build for device and simulator again. While you do it, may as well check deployment target, compiler version, etc. etc. for each.

  by Adam Eberbach on 2010-11-24 23:02:16

• Hi, when base SDK missing appear, after set "latest iOS" on Base SDK panel setting, you just select "Release" item and then back to "Debug", without close and reopen or restart Xcode.

  by Giovambattista Fazioli on 2010-11-24 23:21:22

• You can also do this without restarting Xcode, once you have selected the 'Latest SDK' settings, go back to the drop down and select release, then re-select debug and everything should work again :)

  by Ben Reed on 2011-02-02 10:41:14

• Thank you very much for taking the time to post this. I'm not sure if I would have ever gotten through the problem without your help. Thanks Joe

  by Joe Moniz on 2011-01-23 22:24:22

• I just some code from a person using 4.2 & I'm living in 4.0, I used "Project > Edit project settings > build" as described above and to fix the drop-down issue I repeated same thing with "Project > Edit Active Target > build". So, everything is fixed except the Frameworks that are coming up red, so I think I need to link them again manually :(

  by sid on 2010-12-20 16:56:37

• I'm hugely glad to see this (overall). But, as someone who looks after quite a few iPhone projects, it riles me to see them removing older SDKs so haphazardly. Once again, Apple makes other people jump when they say :-/ It's also worth noting that you can explicitly state the minimum version of iOS that you want to target by setting the IPHONEOS_DEPLOYMENT_TARGET setting. You don't have to use that version of the SDK.

  by Dominic Mitchell on 2010-11-24 23:50:15

• Thanks! Easy peasy, lemon squeezy.

  by Andy Elliott on 2010-11-25 15:40:23

• You saved me! Thanks for the help figuring this out.

  by Edgar Schmidt on 2010-11-27 00:09:03

• Also make sure that you set the Base SDK for your target -- if the target is set to the wrong SDK, it will not allow you to build for anything but the Simulator, although it will compile.

  by Eric O'Connell on 2010-11-29 05:36:10

• Thanks for posting this tip! You saved this noobie iPhone developer a lot of grief. ;-)

  by John Adkins on 2010-12-02 03:55:05

• This did help me thanks a bunch. I get so sick of fighting the issues with developing on OSX but for the time being there is no way around it. Thanks again.

  by Scott on 2010-12-17 04:49:23

• ok why it hard

  by joshuafielder on 2011-02-11 15:06:18

• Thanks!!!!

  by Nando Lambrusco on 2011-02-03 17:19:40

• Thanks a lot! Thanks a lot! Thanks a lot!

  by sudesh kumar on 2011-01-11 08:39:22

• thanks for this, it was driving me crazy. I tried the steps suggested here even before finding this site, but I didn't tried what Sid suggested (i.e. repeating for the active target); when I did that, the problem was gone.

  by andrea on 2011-02-24 22:32:43

• Hi.. I just downloaded sharekit example project and I am still having the same error in the project.I followed all the steps that you have mentioned above...!! But still it is existing how to fix it...

  by Martin on 2011-05-12 13:03:48

• Thanks! Sometimes it's the easiest things that get me stuck

  by peterrory on 2011-04-12 21:20:14

• thanks all it worked for me

  by sreeram somanchi on 2011-04-21 07:24:30

• error: There is no SDK with the name or path 'iphoneos5.0' I got this error while building my project.How to resolve it?

  by MS on 2012-07-09 11:47:57

• @Sid: ur help worked for me! Thanks a lot...

  by MS on 2012-07-09 12:04:00