XCTest-dependent helper targets (TestSupport, test utilities) should be cacheable

Metadata

Source

tuist/tuist #9756

Updated

Jun 11, 2026

Domains

Cache

Details

Why is this needed?

staticFramework targets that depend on XCTest (e.g. TestSupport targets providing test mocks/helpers) are excluded from binary caching. These are not test bundles — they’re regular frameworks only consumed by test targets.

tuist cache --print-hashes does not list any XCTest-dependent staticFramework target. In our project this excludes ~60 targets (TestSupport modules, SnapshotTesting, test utility frameworks) — none of which are dependencies of the app target.

Reproduction:

Create a staticFramework target that depends on an SPM package importing XCTest
Run tuist cache --print-hashes
The target does not appear in the cacheable list

Environment: Tuist 4.150.0 (Cloud/EE), Xcode 26.2, macOS 26.2

Steps to address the need

Non-test-bundle targets (staticFramework, framework) that depend on XCTest should be included in tuist cache --print-hashes and be cacheable as xcframeworks. Replacing a TestSupport target with a binary doesn’t change the dependency graph — it’s still only consumed by test bundles.

Flights

Investigate, reproduce, or fix this item in an isolated repository. Each Flight preserves its outcome and agent session.

New Flights are paused Configure model inference, GitHub, and a sandbox provider to start another Flight. Existing results remain available below.

No Flights yet

Start a Flight and preserve its objective, outcome, and session here.

Comments

L

linear[bot] Mar 8, 2026

D

dosubot[bot] Mar 8, 2026

Hi @eghnacr! I’m Dosu and I’m helping the tuist team.

This is a known limitation in Tuist’s binary caching. The caching logic excludes any target with an XCTest dependency, without distinguishing between actual test bundles (.unitTests, .uiTests) and utility frameworks that happen to import XCTest.

The check happens in dependsOnXCTest(), which returns true if a target:

Is a test bundle product
Has ENABLE_TESTING_SEARCH_PATHS set to “YES”
Has a direct dependency on XCTest.framework

There was actually a PR #8529 attempting to remove this restriction, but it was closed without merging. The original rationale (from PR #4012) was that XCTest-dependent libraries have “non-deterministic behavior in caching scenarios.”

For a deeper discussion on this feature request, I’d recommend opening a thread on the community forum in the Ideas category, explaining your use case with ~60 affected TestSupport modules. The maintainers may have more context on why PR #8529 was rejected and whether there’s appetite to revisit this.

To reply, just mention @dosu.

Share context across your team and agents. Try Dosu.