xcodebuild ignoring -derivedDataPath

Am I misunderstanding what -derivedDataPath does, or is this a bug? You can clearly see in the output that xcodebuild is ignoring the command-line value, and defaulting to Library/Developer/Xcode/DerivedData.

Command line invocation: /Applications/ -project MyProj.xcodeproj -scheme “MyProj (iOS)" -destination "name=iPhone 12" -derivedDataPath=/Users/alpe77/myproj/MyProj/Build build User defaults from command line: derivedDataPath = /Users/alpe77/myproj/MyProj/Build IDEPackageSupportUseBuiltinSCM = YES note: Using new build system note: Building targets in parallel note: Planning build note: Analyzing workspace note: Using build description from disk note: Build preparation complete CodeSign /Users/alpe77/Library/Developer/Xcode/DerivedData/MyProj-aozsidihjyumkvevtfoqflhumohn/Build/Products/Debug-iphonesimulator/MyProj.app (in target 'MyProj (iOS)' from project 'MyProj') cd /Users/alpe77/myproj/MyProj export CODESIGN_ALLOCATE\=/Applications/ Signing Identity: "-" /usr/bin/codesign --force --sign - --entitlements /Users/alpe77/Library/Developer/Xcode/DerivedData/MyProj-aozsidihjyumkvevtfoqflhumohn/Build/ \(iOS\).build/MyProj.app.xcent --timestamp\=none /Users/alpe77/Library/Developer/Xcode/DerivedData/MyProj-aozsidihjyumkvevtfoqflhumohn/Build/Products/Debug-iphonesimulator/MyProj.app /Users/alpe77/Library/Developer/Xcode/DerivedData/MyProj-aozsidihjyumkvevtfoqflhumohn/Build/Products/Debug-iphonesimulator/MyProj.app: replacing existing signature ** BUILD SUCCEEDED ** [0.771 sec] % xcrun xcodebuild -version Xcode 12.5.1 Build version 12E507 

2 Answers

Had the same problem (Xcode 12.4) and found out that the build environment configuration variable CONFIGURATION_BUILD_DIR overrides the path given in -derivedDataPath

I opened "Xcode Preferences > Locations > Derived Data > Advanced" and changed the build location setting from my custom setting to "Unique" which solved the problem.

Would be interested in how to prevent CONFIGURATION_BUILD_DIR from overriding -derivedDataPath on the command line, though...

Edit

See for a solution.

From what I could figure out, at least for Xcode 13, xcodebuild ignores -derivedDataPath for build products/intermediates, if they're overridden in Xcode defaults, in e.g. Xcode Preferences > Locations > Derived Data > Advanced - they're derived from Derived Data set in Xcode defaults, not from the one passed to xcodebuild. As a workaround, we can "clear" those defaults as well, when invoking xcodebuild like below (luckily they're clearly visible in the list of defaults for com.apple.dt.Xcode, as IDECustomBuildProductsPath and IDECustomBuildIntermediatesPath, and xcodebuild supports overriding the custom defaults in general by passing -userdefault=value):

xcodebuild -derivedDataPath /custom/path -IDECustomBuildProductsPath="" -IDECustomBuildIntermediatesPath="" ...