Open Radar

 
Summary:
Xcode’s only way of creating frameworks that can be used across multiple platforms is duplicating them, and sharing the same product name.
This is ridiculous in itself and a clear limitation of Xcode’s legacy.

At least their configuration can be shared with .xcconfig files, but the list of files to be compiled in them cannot be shared, **resulting in multiple sources of truth**.

Steps to Reproduce:
- Create a project.
- Create a framework X.
- Duplicate the framework THREE times, for a total of 4 frameworks: Mac OS X, iOS, tvOS, and watchOS.
- Make them share the same product name.
- Create a new file.

Expected Results:
You're not forced to select all 4 frameworks. These 4 should just be ONE thing, that happens to compile to 4 different platforms. That’s an IDE implementation detail that's leaking to the UI.

Actual Results:
You need to select all 4 frameworks, which isn't a problem in itself (just annoying), but it means that the list of files that the 4 frameworks will build does not come from a single source of truth, leading to hard to maintain projects and error prone configurations. This does not scale.

Regression:
Other IDEs, like IntelliJ, provide declarative ways to represent this list of files. I can think of several ways in which this (and by this I mean unifying frameworks that are actually just one thing) could be accomplished at the UI level.

IDEs should provide non-leaky abstractions.

Notes:
I know this Radar will just end up in a blackhole, but at least I did my job.