Building Subsurface-mobile for iOS

Prerequisites

• macOS with Xcode and the iOS SDK installed
• Qt 6.8 or later (installed via the Qt online installer, with both the ios and macos kits and the following additional libraries: Qt 5 Compatibility module, Qt Connectivity, Qt Location (TP), Qt Positioning, and Qt Shader Tools)
• cmake, autoconf, automake, libtool, pkg-config (e.g. from Homebrew)

Build

The ios-build-subsurface.sh script handles the entire build: native dependencies, Kirigami, libdivecomputer, and Subsurface itself.

cd <repo>/packaging/ios
./ios-build-subsurface.sh

The script accepts several environment variables to override defaults:

Variable	Default	Description
QT_VERSION	6.10.2	Qt version to use
QT_ROOT	~/Qt	Qt installation root
ARCH	arm64	Target architecture
TARGET_SDK	iphoneos	iphoneos or iphonesimulator
BUILD_TYPE	Release	Release or Debug

Example for a simulator build:

TARGET_SDK=iphonesimulator ARCH=arm64 ./ios-build-subsurface.sh

The build output (an Xcode project and app bundle) ends up in <repo>/../build-ios/.

Signing and distribution

The build script disables code signing (CODE_SIGNING_ALLOWED=NO) so that it works without an Apple Developer account. To sign and distribute:

1. Open <repo>/../build-ios/subsurface-mobile.xcodeproj in Xcode.
2. Select the Subsurface-mobile target and configure your signing team and bundle identifier.
3. Build an archive from Xcode for distribution.

An Apple Developer account is required for distribution.