When getting feedback from your users, it's important to know what version of your software they're having problems with. Here's a simple way to have an always incrementing build number in your project.

This script was adapted from a discussion on Dave Delong's Blog. I also took the liberty of adding a date/time stamp.

It fills in these fields in your Info.plist file:

• CFBuildVersion
• CFBuildNumber
• CFBuildDate
• CFBundleVersion
• CFBundleShortVersionString
• CFBundleLongVersionString

In order to avoid errors in your build, you may need to first add these strings to your Info.plist.

Script below:

#!/bin/bash
# This was taken from variations from:
# http://davedelong.com/blog/2009/04/15/incrementing-build-numbers-xcode

buildPlist="${PRODUCT_NAME}-Info.plist"
# Get the existing buildVersion and buildNumber values from the buildPlist
buildVersion=$(/usr/libexec/PlistBuddy -c "Print CFBuildVersion" $buildPlist)
buildNumber=$(/usr/libexec/PlistBuddy -c "Print CFBuildNumber" $buildPlist)
buildDate=$(date "+%Y%m%d.%H%M%S")

# Increment the buildNumber
buildNumber=$(($buildNumber + 1))

# Set the version numbers in the buildPlist
/usr/libexec/PlistBuddy -c "Set :CFBuildNumber $buildNumber" $buildPlist
/usr/libexec/PlistBuddy -c "Set :CFBuildDate $buildDate" $buildPlist
/usr/libexec/PlistBuddy -c "Set :CFBundleVersion $buildVersion.$buildNumber" $buildPlist
/usr/libexec/PlistBuddy -c "Set :CFBundleShortVersionString $buildVersion.$buildNumber" $buildPlist
/usr/libexec/PlistBuddy -c "Set :CFBundleLongVersionString $buildVersion.$buildNumber.$buildDate" $buildPlist

You can retrieve this information from within your program just like anything else in your Info.plist. This example extracts the short version string:

NSDictionary *infoDictionary = [[NSBundle mainBundle] infoDictionary];

NSString *currentVersion = [infoDictionary objectForKey:@"CFBundleShortVersionString"];