fix: shorebird release ios flutter build step takes a long time

[zhanglijie5997]

➜ flutter_fpg git:(feature/Init_Project) ✗ yes | shorebird release ios --export-method ad-hoc
✓ Fetching apps (1.3s)
⠧ Building ipa with Flutter 3.24.4 (de629bcb9c)... (867.8s)

Stuck here, unable to continue execution

[bryanoltman]

Could you run the same command with the --verbose flag and share the result? That will give us better insight into what is taking so long.

[eseidel]

Felix also improved the output for iOS builds yesterday in Shorebird 1.4.8, so shorebird upgrade might improve the output.

[MohiuddinM]

I am facing the same problem, when building ios in Github actions. It gets stuck at the Building ipa with Flutter 3.24.4 (de629bcb9c)...[Process.run] /Users/runner/.shorebird/bin/cache/flutter/de629bcb9c96360eb3ca20fcc045263c19b1a33d/bin/flutter build ipa --release.

[MohiuddinM]

@eseidel Can the team add ability to use an older version of shorebird (as a quick fix)? The current release is completely broken for IOS releases in Github actions.

[bryanoltman]

I think it's more likely something to do with a change in flutter version than it is with shorebird, so downgrading shorebird wouldn't fix the issue. You can pass --flutter-version=1.2.3 to the release command to pick a different version of flutter.

[MohiuddinM]

@bryanoltman It can also be helpful if you increase logging in the step it gets stuck on. I can then post the logs here so you can reproduce the issue.

[MohiuddinM]

From the current logs, it looks like it gets stuck on

shorebird/packages/shorebird_cli/lib/src/shorebird_process.dart

Line 55 in 6704e56

final result = await processWrapper.run(

[bryanoltman]

@MohiuddinM that's the function our CLI uses to launch any kind of external process, so I think you're correct re: that being the last thing the shorebird CLI does before hanging, but also why I don't think the shorebird CLI itself is the problem, but rather something else that the shorebird CLI is interfacing with.

Can you try running this locally with the following?

FLUTTER_STORAGE_BASE_URL=https://download.shorebird.dev /path/to/shorebird/bin/cache/de629bcb9c96360eb3ca20fcc045263c19b1a33d/bin/flutter build ipa --release

[MohiuddinM]

Can you change Process.run to Process.start (like the android ones), so the inner logs from the process will also get printed in "realtime", instead of being printed at the end of the process.

[MohiuddinM]

@MohiuddinM that's the function our CLI uses to launch any kind of external process, so I think you're correct re: that being the last thing the shorebird CLI does before hanging, but also why I don't think the shorebird CLI itself is the problem, but rather something else that the shorebird CLI is interfacing with.

Can you try running this locally with the following?

FLUTTER_STORAGE_BASE_URL=https://download.shorebird.dev /path/to/shorebird/bin/cache/de629bcb9c96360eb3ca20fcc045263c19b1a33d/bin/flutter build ipa --release

I ran this cmd locally, and it finishes normally

[bryanoltman]

Hmm, so that suggests it might be an issue with the CI machine. Is it running the same version of macOS and Xcode as you're using locally to successfully build?

[MohiuddinM]

Hmm, so that suggests it might be an issue with the CI machine. Is it running the same version of macOS and Xcode as you're using locally to successfully build?

I am using macos-latest-xlarge on Github actions. Both local machine and action runner use xcode 16

[bryanoltman]

FWIW, I locally compared stock Flutter to Shorebird's Flutter on a build that was taking a while, and, at least for me, there's no appreciable difference in performance:

Flutter: build ipa --release 32.17s user 11.48s system 26% cpu 2:47.37 total
Shorebird flutter: build ipa --release 32.33s user 9.47s system 24% cpu 2:47.28 total