Image: GitHub
Why it mattersA Linux-only path to the App Store opens iOS development to people who do not want to pay for a Mac, and gives teams on Linux a way to keep one language and one shell.
Writing an iPhone app and getting it into the Apple App Store has always needed a Mac at some point, because the final build step runs on Xcode and Xcode runs only on macOS. Joshua Swarren's omarchy-apple-dev repository has reached 1,151 stars with an installer that removes that step: SwiftUI apps are built on Omarchy Linux, installed on an iPhone over USB, and uploaded to App Store Connect, with no macOS computer involved at all.
The repository has gathered 1,151 stars and 53 forks in 29 days. The README lists the current working set the author verified as a fresh user on x86_64 Arch Linux: Swift 6.4.0 from the AUR swift-bin package, xtool 1.20.1 with four patches, pymobiledevice3, LLDB 21.0.0, and the iPhoneOS 27.0 SDK. The author says the device install and the LLDB debug loop were proven on an M1 Apple Silicon machine, and a community report from Jon Kinney confirmed the same flow on a Framework Desktop with an iPhone 16, used for what the report calls a real client project.
One .xip from Apple, no Mac for the install itself
install-toolchain.sh installs the Swift toolchain, builds xtool from source, and prepares the darwin SDK. The one external step is a single download from developer.apple.com: an Xcode.xip file, from which the installer extracts the iOS SDK pieces that xtool needs. The README says Apple does not distribute these pieces outside the Xcode archive, which is why the download cannot be automated away. A free Apple ID is enough for device installs; a paid Apple Developer membership is only needed to ship through App Store Connect.
The repo also ships Linux versions of Apple's build-time tools. tools/darwin-tools includes actool for asset catalogues (PNG, JPEG, SVG, PDF, HEIC), colour sets, custom SF Symbol sets, app icons and Liquid Glass pre-renders, plus xcstringstool for String Catalogs. tools/ibtool compiles storyboards and xibs byte-identical to Xcode 27.0 against all of NetNewsWire's. The tools/xcodeproj2xtool.py script reads an existing .xcodeproj and writes an xtool adapter alongside it, with warnings for anything it cannot map.
NetNewsWire, IceCubes and Mastodon as the test cases
The README says three well-known iOS apps have been built end to end on Linux with this toolchain: NetNewsWire with its extensions and 15 frameworks, IceCubesApp, and Mastodon for iOS. All three show as VALID in App Store Connect, according to the author's own test runs. ship.sh wraps SwiftPM .dynamic products as frameworks, stamps the DTXcode and related keys that App Store processing reads, signs with rcodesign, builds an .ipa, and validates it offline against bundle layout, Info.plist keys, Mach-O architecture, icons in Assets.car, profiles and entitlements, team ID and every sealed hash.
Wireless deploys are blocked on iOS 26 for a pure Linux setup, which the author documents and attributes to Apple's RemotePairing design: a Mac that once enabled "Connect via Network" holds a working wireless tunnel, and no Linux host can claim one on its own. USB deploys work on any machine.
For teams that already run Linux on their servers and want to keep one language and one shell across their backend and their iOS app, this removes the main reason the team had to buy a Mac. Linux stays the computer the work is done on, and the only Apple-side steps left are a single file download and the paid developer membership for App Store distribution.
Source
- omarchy-apple-dev on GitHub (Joshua Swarren, MIT licence)
This item was written by an AI system from the linked source. Reveneau is responsible for what it publishes.
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