❌

Normal view

Received — 21 October 2026 ⏭

Xcode’s New .xcproj Files Are JSON

✇Michael Tsai
By: Michael Tsai
17 September 2026 at 19:32

Apple:

Xcode now supports a JSON-based project format (.xcproj) that’s more readable, merge-friendly, and easier for coding agents to edit. Enable it in the file inspector. Projects using .xcproj also open in earlier versions of Xcode 27. Learn more in Updating your Xcode project configuration file format.

Fatbobman:

[The] new project.xcproj caught my eye. What it replaces is project.pbxproj, the build graph inside the .xcodeproj bundle, not the bundle itself.

[…]

In the age of agents, the drawbacks of pbxproj are amplified further. A great many IDs carry both object identity and cross-references, so an agent modifying a project usually has to locate the right object in a flat table, then update several mutually referencing places in step, all while trying to keep the serialized output faithful to Xcode’s conventions.

[…]

From a flat ID table to a tree that mirrors the UI: instead of dumping everything into objects, it unfolds into structures like files / targets / build-settings, so diffs look closer to the operations you actually performed in the interface;

The direction of relationships is reversed: a file can declare which targets it belongs to via target-membership, so adding a file no longer means editing several mutually referencing places at once;

Simon B. Støvring:

Developers have been screaming for a friendlier Xcode project format for years. I’m one of them.

Tony Arnold:

I’ve been waiting for something like this for most of my career! 🎉

Rob Napier:

It does feel like another case of “we’ve quickly done a thing to help AI that we’ve been unwilling to do for years to help humans.” I’m seeing that happen across the industry.

It is very welcome and appreciated, and lots of thanks to the teams involved. It’s also frustrating that it took “it can help AI” to make it happen.

Apple:

xcode-project-format is a Swift library for reading, writing, and manipulating Xcode’s JSON-based project.xcproj format. It models the format as a rich set of value types nested under a single namespace, XCSchema, so consumers get precise, typed access to a project’s structure instead of hand-parsing JSON.

The goal is to give the ecosystem a shared, accurate model of the Xcode project format — so tools like generators, linters, verifiers, and validators don’t each have to reverse-engineer the format from scratch.

Helge Heß:

Didn’t most people switch to local SPM projects anyways? Those are the new xcproj that have to be replaced with sth sensible 🙃

Fatbobman:

What the community has actually been waiting years for is a project manifest along the lines of Package.swift: something written by people, read by people, and reviewed by people, rather than a more modern encoding of the IDE’s internal database.

Previously:

Update (2026-09-23): John Gruber:

The old .pbxproj project format was not XML; it was an old NeXT-style “ASCII” property list — a file format that is surprisingly JSON-like considering that it predates not only JSON, but JavaScript (JSON = JavaScript Object Notation).

Received — 9 September 2026 ⏭

Omarchy and Omacom Foundation

✇Michael Tsai
By: Michael Tsai
26 August 2026 at 20:20

Omarchy:

Omarchy is an omakase Linux distribution based on Arch, the tiling window manager Hyprland, and the desktop construction-kit Quickshell. It ships with everything a modern, savvy computer user needs to be productive immediately. From Neovim (btw) to Chromium, Obsidian to LibreOffice, and Kdenlive to OBS Studio. Hell, even a retro Winamp-style music player is there!

This isn’t just a grab bag of preinstalled packages, though. It’s a complete system designed with both aesthetics and productivity in mind.

[…]

Omarchy isn’t like Windows and it’s not like macOS either. It’s not trying to be as familiar as possible. It’s trying to be beautiful and better.

I do not find this, or Linux on the desktop in general, very appealing. I don’t agree that it’s beautiful, though neither is current macOS. But I do find this effort interesting. The concept—preconfigure a well designed system and try to make it different and better—is good. This is not your average open-source project. It has $10M in backing from the founders of Shopify, Stripe, Dell, Twitter, Cloudflare, Sesame, and 37signals, and now (Hacker News):

Drew Houston, cofounder and co-CEO of Dropbox, and Peter Steinberger, creator of OpenClaw.

[…]

And OpenClaw has essentially provided the roadmap for how Omarchy should tackle its explosive growth. How do you deal with PR backlogs that suddenly go parabolic? What about security around plugins?

Many of these were/are Mac users.

Eduardo:

Run the upstream Omarchy desktop as a native, hardware-accelerated app on an Apple Silicon Mac.

Try Omarchy packages a project-built ARM64 Arch Linux image configured with Omarchy Quattro, a QEMU runtime using Apple Hypervisor Framework, and a small Swift/AppKit launcher into one macOS app.

One Happy Fellow (Hacker News):

Omarchy 4.0 shipped with a collection of security issues which I can only describe as regrettable (because I promised my mum I would swear less). There are bangers like video title bash injection or all notifications being able to run arbitrary bash on your machine.

All projects have security issues but not all projects have such predictable security issues. We know how to deal with untrusted inputs. We know we should not use AI-generated bash scripts for processing untrusted input, particularly with seemingly no review.

And you can’t get to a reasonably secure system by starting with a pile of bash slop and hoping others will catch and fix the issues before they are exploited.

Previously:

Update (2026-08-31): David Heinemeier Hansson:

I don’t think people truly understand just how determined I am at making Linux succeed on the desktop.

0xCC (Hacker News):

A security issue in Omarchy’s default Docker configuration meant that essentially every program running in the user’s desktop session could escalate to root without a password, sudo, or a privilege prompt.

If you use Omarchy, the most important takeaway is simple: update to 4.0.1.

lain:

The exploit has been submitted to CERT/CC, because as it turns out, it affects many other distros as well :)

David Heinemeier Hansson:

Omarchy is blowing up. I’ve never been involved with anything in my career that has grown this fast.

[…]

Now it’s time to build a proper institution. Durable, resilient, and competent. That’s what we’re doing here on Basecamp now. I’m spinning up teams for every facet of responsible distro management, and I’m getting an absolute outpouring of interest for all of them.

[…]

There are many people who’d love to see this rocket blow up before it reaches the moon. Aggrieved Linux users who don’t like the sudden attention their exclusive hobby has received. Competing Linux distributions that are seeing our numbers explode. Mac stans who’ve sunk their identity into an apple. And, of course, any of the haters I’ve picked up in my quarter-century career speaking bluntly on the internet.

[…]

[The Year of Linux on the Desktop] has been a joke for two decades. But by the end of the year, nobody at Apple or Microsoft is going to be laughing. They’re going to be scrambling. Because neither of these proud organizations currently has any method to counter the speed, vision, or ambition with which we’re going to accelerate into the future of personal computing.

[…]

For thirty years, we’ve been subject to one OS overlord or another. Dictating how we compute. Choking off competitors through platform malfeasance. Tollboothing the distribution. That ends now. Because Linux is going to win.

Who knows whether they’re going to be the ones to finally do it or whether this will be an embarrassing flameout, but I respect the energy and ambition. For a long time, it’s felt like Apple is more interested in thwarting than enabling and that they kind of resent even having to continue making a desktop OS. These guys actually like computers. However, there’s a big difference between recognizing that the mantle is falling and being able to pick it up.

See also: Dithering.

David Heinemeier Hansson (Hacker News):

The Omacom Foundation has its first two Distinguished Corporate Patrons! 1Password and 37signals are each contributing $100,000 a year for the next three years, which takes the foundation’s funding to $12.6 million.

ok123456:

What exactly is the Mozilla Foundation developing these days? What is their budget?

Jason Meller:

Omarchy Quattro is already the #3 Linux distro by active 1Password users. Even crazier, on the weekends it’s #1, beating out Ubuntu for the first time on Saturday.

Received — 11 August 2026 ⏭
Received — 9 August 2026 ⏭
❌