Open Radar

 
Summary:
When setting the “Location” of a group (or any other object) in the “Identity Inspector” to a symlink, Xcode does not store the symlink in the project file.
Instead, it resolves the symlink and saves its destination path in the project file.
This is less than useful in several scenarios — the case where resources of one project are generated in a different context are the one where I got heavily bitten by that.

Steps to Reproduce:
0. Create a symlink to any directory on your system from within your project space.
1. Open the project and add a new Group.
2. In the “Identity Inspector”, set the “Location” by clicking the little button below the popup-menu. (In my case, “Relative to Group” is selected in the popup, but that really doesn’t matter)

Expected Results:
The relative path should end with the name of the symlink.

Actual Results:
The relative path traverses the whole filesystem to the destination of the symlink.

Regression:

Notes:
This can be worked around be creating hard links, when working with files — hard links to directories, however, are…problematic.
The workaround for directories is
1. to create a normal directory with the exact name and location your symlink will have
2. select that folder as the location of your group in the project — Xcode now stores the correct location
3. delete the folder and create your symlink in its place.