In iOS development, compilation is rarely discussed.
Most of the time, after writing code, you click Run, and the IDE handles the rest. But if you break down this process, many steps occur in between: parsing the project, selecting a target, handling architectures, calling SDKs, generating an executable, and packaging it into an IPA.
These steps are usually hidden inside Xcode, but once you step away from it, you realize that the entire workflow can exist independently.
Recently, while looking at an iOS development tool called Kuaixie (kxapp), I noticed it has a built-in independent compilation tool — kxbuild. Its positioning is straightforward: a compiler that can directly process iOS projects.
This article mainly discusses what such a tool actually does from the perspective of the compilation process itself.
