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PincerPincer

Building from source

Requirements

Section titled “Requirements”
  • A current Xcode with Swift 6 and the macOS 15 / iOS 18 SDKs or later.
  • The Xcode license accepted: sudo xcodebuild -license accept.

The SwiftUI macros only ship inside Xcode.app, so the Command Line Tools alone won’t build the UI.

Quick build with SwiftPM

Section titled “Quick build with SwiftPM”
Terminal window
swift build                      # PincerKit, PincerUI, dev app, checks
scripts/bundle-mac.sh release    # -> build/Pincer.app (ad-hoc signed)
open build/Pincer.app

Signed builds with Xcode

Section titled “Signed builds with Xcode”

Generate the Xcode project with XcodeGen:

Terminal window
xcodegen generate
open Pincer.xcodeproj

Set your team, then run Pincer-macOS or Pincer-iOS. The Xcode-built macOS app is sandboxed.

Self-checks

Section titled “Self-checks”
Terminal window
PINCER_KEYCHAIN=memory swift run PincerChecks
PINCER_KEYCHAIN=memory swift run PincerChecks --live ws://127.0.0.1:18789 dev-token
PINCER_KEYCHAIN=memory swift run PincerChecks --demo   # the built-in demo

--live runs an end-to-end check against a gateway, such as the mock gateway.

Environment variables

Section titled “Environment variables”
Variable Effect
PINCER_KEYCHAIN=memory Keep identities and secrets in memory, so checks and dev runs never touch your real Keychain.
PINCER_CACHE_DIR off disables the transcript cache. A path moves it.
PINCER_REQUEST_LOG A file path to log every request and the gateway’s reply.

They work for the app too:

Terminal window
open --env PINCER_KEYCHAIN=memory build/Pincer.app
open --env PINCER_REQUEST_LOG=/tmp/pincer.log build/Pincer.app

Project layout

Section titled “Project layout”
Path Contents
Sources/PincerKit Protocol client (handshake, signing, reconnect, TLS pinning), models, and the observable stores. No UI.
Sources/PincerUI Shared UI for macOS and iOS. The shell is SwiftUI. The transcript and sidebar are native for performance: NSTableView/NSOutlineView on macOS and UICollectionView on iOS, with Markdown laid out once with TextKit.
Apps/macOS, Apps/iOS @main app shells used by the Xcode project.
Apps/Shared Resources shared by both apps, including the layered app icon (AppIcon.icon).
Design/AppIcon Flattened reference artwork for the app icon.
Sources/PincerMacDev Dev entry point so SwiftPM alone can produce the macOS app.
Sources/PincerChecks Self-checks, with an optional live end-to-end run.
mock-gateway/ Node mock of the Gateway protocol for offline development.
website/ This documentation site.

Known gaps

Section titled “Known gaps”
  • iOS runs in the simulator (connect, sidebar, history) but hasn’t been tried on a real device yet.
  • Gateway Settings has been tested against the mock only.