No Repository Type Git in Xcode 4 Developer Preview? Here is the solution!

Besides all the iOS 4.0 hype and the fantastic new iPhone, what really made my day is the forthcoming new version of Apple’s IDE: Xcode 4.

After all, WWDC is a Developer Conference. Innovating the essentials tools we all work with daily, is as big a part of what we should have come to expect, as new SDKs and updated operating systems. Unfortunately, I cannot post any details about Xcode 4, nor any screenshots, as the current preview is still under NDA.

A key feature, that has been leaked elsewhere, is Git (and GitHub) support. I heavily use Git as a Source Code Management solution, both in my company and for my private projects.

I was literally blown away by the level of support for Git, that Apple demoed during WWDC.

No wonder, that huge disappointment hit me, when I tried to clone my first Git repo with the Xcode 4 Developer Preview and did not find the “Git” repository type in the UI. The only type offered was Subversion.

Turns out, there’s a simple solution: Xcode 4 expects the git command line tool to be available in /usr/bin. A quick which git on my console revealed, that my git binary instead resided in /usr/local/git/bin/git.

After creating a symlink in /usr/bin pointing to /usr/local/git/bin/git and restarting Xcode 4, everythink worked perfect!

The full command: sudo ln -s /usr/local/git/bin/git /usr/bin/git

A couple of observations: Connecting to GitHub did not work via the native git protocol, so I had to paste in the https URI to the repo. Same with ssh key based authentication, which did not work. I had to use my GitHub registered email address (username did not work) and password.

Besides this, working with a GitHub hosted git repository from within Xcode 4 just got really fantastic!