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Distinguish between production (Xcode.app) and beta (Xcode-Beta.app) releases consistently

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Assessment

Difficulty
4/5
Estimated time
3-5 days
Newbie friendliness
48/100
Issue type
Feature
Clarity
Mostly clear
Activity status
Quiet
Tech stack
macos, swift
Domain
desktop, tooling

Research direction

No implementation files, tests, or entry points are identified in the issue. Start by locating the existing Xcode application naming and version-mapping flow, then trace how production and beta releases are represented; done means stable Xcode.app and Xcode-Beta.app mappings, versioned older releases, and a user choice about deleting them.

Written by the indexing model from the issue text.

Description

enhancement

Tell us how we can improve Xcodes
Implement a feature where the most recent production Xcode release is mapped to "Xcode.app" on my Mac, while any Beta builds are automatically mapped to "Xcode-Beta.app". Older releases are then mapped to their specific version, if it's required for testing purposes. Ask the user if older versions should be automatically deleted, or kept.

Is your feature request related to a problem? Please describe.
I'd like to keep two symlinks on my Dock, one for production, and one for the latest Beta version, so I don't need to update or change them over time. If I need to run a specific, older version, I can open it easily. Not a specific problem, but a workflow improvement that I'm sure many developers would appreciate.

What would you like to see? How would you like it to work?
As mentioned, the latest build of each branch gets renamed dynamically to either "Xcode.app' or 'Xcode-Beta.app', and all older versions are renamed to their specific version, as it happens with Xcode.app today. However, there is currently no code (probably) to work on both the production AND the development branch. I suggest that this needs a fix.

Dominant language
Swift
Stars
8.6k
Forks
387
Avg merge
6d 7h
Merged PRs (30d)
3

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