Appcelerator hangs indefinitely on “Launching iOS Simulator”

Question

I'm trying to run an Appcelerator project in the iOS simulator using:

appc run -p ios

The build hangs indefinitely on “Launching iOS Simulator”. Here's the console output towards the end:

[INFO]  Alloy compiled in 8.85412s
[INFO]  Alloy compiler completed successfully
[INFO]  Creating Xcode project
[INFO]  Creating Entitlements.plist
[INFO]  Creating Info.plist
[INFO]  Disabling ATS
[INFO]  Creating main.m
[INFO]  Creating Xcode config files
[INFO]  Copying Titanium libraries
[INFO]  Copying Titanium iOS files
[INFO]  Creating debugger and profiler plists
[INFO]  Analyzing Resources directory
[INFO]  Analyzing platform files
[INFO]  Analyzing module files
[INFO]  Analyzing localized launch images
[INFO]  Analyzing CommonJS modules
[INFO]  Creating asset catalog
[INFO]  Creating app icon set
[INFO]  Creating launch image set
[INFO]  App thinning disabled, skipping asset image sets
[INFO]  Processing JavaScript files
[INFO]  Writing app properties
[INFO]  Writing i18n files
[INFO]  Processing Titanium symbols
[INFO]  Removing files
[INFO]  Skipping xcodebuild
[INFO]  Finished building the application in 11s 780ms
[INFO]  Launching iOS Simulator

No error message is produced. The simulator will launch and is responsive to input, but the app won't be available from the home screen or launch.

So far I've tried:

• Tried building the project via Appcelerator Studio instead of the command line

• Selected "Project" > "Clean…" from within Appcelerator Studio

• Selected "Reset Content & Settings..." from within the Simulator

• Restarted the computer

Yet the problem still persists. Previously I was running in the iOS simulator without issue and I can still build to a development iPhone without issue. As far as I'm aware no settings have been changed or upgrades have occurred in the interim.

Any ideas as to how to resolve this would be welcome.

Answer 1

Are you running Xcode 8.2...? I had the same issue soon after updating to Xcode 8.2. I'm in the process of going back to 8.1, I'll let you know if they resolves the issue...

Answer 2

Add trace to the command to see more about the problem

DEBUG=* appc run -p ios -l trace

Answer 3

Quick follow-up why this happens: While releasing Xcode 8.2, Apple breaking-changed their simctl utility which we also use. Titanium SDK 6.0.1 and later fixes this issue.

There also is a blog post with more details, thank you!

Answer 4

Appcelerator is working on a fix and it is available via the continuous builds link. I just tested and all is well

This link for example today worked.

 appc ti sdk install --branch 6_0_X 6.0.1.v20161217061750