Sanity-check for iOS API versions used within an application

Question

I have an application where I am supporting a deployment target of 4.3 with a base SDK of 6.x.

I find myself having to weak link API methods and provide alternative workarounds for older runtime based on strategies found in the document "Using SDK-Based Development".

The problem I am facing is, occasionally and unintentionally, I would use a method that is available only in a newer SDK without realizing it and did not weak-link the method. This causes a crash for users running the app on an older version of the OS.

While I know the number of users having that old a runtime (iOS 4.3) is diminishing, I would like to know if there is a tool or a way for us to generate a report that would list APIs available in SDKs other than that of the deployment target, so that I may review the code to ensure proper weak-linking is performed, prior to shipping the product.

Off the top of my head, compiling the source to an older version of the SDK should throw errors, but then again, Apple's strategy has always been to ship new XCode without older SDKs.

I am not looking for a perfect solution. Any other workarounds would be helpful too.

Answer 1

If you don't mind paying, Deploymate can scan your project and identify API calls which may fail on older operating system versions. Works with Mac and iOS apps/projects.

Deploymate helps you identify unavailable, deprecated and obsolete API usage in your Xcode projects