ISRakel

This gem is a collection of rake tasks for maintaining common tasks for the iPhone Simulator on Mac OS like ...

• Change preferences of the iPhone Simulator
• Change the language of the iPhone Simulator
• Reset the iPhone Simulator
• Start the iPhone Simulator
• Stop the iPhone Simulator

Some of them are stolen from RestKit.

Besides the gem dependencies, that are automatically resolved and installed via bundler, there's only one external dependency to the ios-sim binary. The most convenient way to install it is via npm:

npm install ios-sim

You will need to install the gem:

gem install israkel

and then your Rakefile in your project might look like:

require 'israkel'
ISRakel::Tasks.instance

That's it. After that you can just run rake -T to list the available tasks.

You can also change the default prefix simulator:

ISRakel::Tasks.instance do |i|
  i.name = 'ios'
end

There are binary plist files that you can edit with your custom rake tasks to change some settings:

i = ISRakel::Tasks.instance
desc "Change keyboard preferences"
task :set_keyboard_preferences do
  i.edit_preferences do |p|
    p.merge!({
      :KeyboardAutocapitalization => false,
      :KeyboardAutocorrection     => false,
      :KeyboardCapsLock           => false,
      :KeyboardCheckSpelling      => false,
      :KeyboardPeriodShortcut     => false,
    })
  end
end

There's a second method called edit_global_preferences which works the same, just edits a different file.

Allowing access upfront can be required because it's not possible to use KIF to tap on the OK button of the access alert views.

i = ISRakel::Tasks.instance

desc 'Allow AddressBook access'
task :allow_addressbook_access do
  i.current_device.allow_addressbook_access('com.xing.App')
end

desc 'Allow GPS access'
task :allow_gps_access do
  i.current_device.allow_gps_access('com.xing.App')
end

desc 'Allow Photo Library access'
task :allow_photos_access do
  i.current_device.allow_photos_access('com.xing.App')
end

Even easier, you don't have to define the rake tasks in your Rakefile. There are generic tasks that take the environment variable BUNDLE_ID into account:

DEVICE_TYPE=iPhone-5s IOS_SDK_VERSION=7.1 BUNDLE_ID=com.example.apple-samplecode.PhotoPicker rake simulator:allow_photos_access

Please raise issues if you find problems or have a feature request.