Improve handling of (code generated) XCode project files about apple

[kelson42]

@BPerlakiH Thank you for the issue. This is always needed and consequently the problem now is clear: .gitignore as no effect on tracked files.

I can already tell you that the two solutions you propose are not OK to me because robot commitimg a super anti-pattern and the second proposal does not respect the requirements.

We wanted to leave the Xcode project folder in git, so that a new developer can clone the project and start using it. This raises a question how can we make sure that the project file is up to date?

This is the responsability of the developer and the reviewer. We can build helpers if we remarks that this is difficult to secure. Anyway this is a process optimisation which we don't really know if it is necessary. Optimisations - per definition "non madatory" - should be avoided at the early stage of the development of a feature because it slows down everything and let us loose the focus.

We wanted to add the project folder to .gitignore. This is not working as we expected. The project folder is already "tracked" by git, so every change to it needs to be committed. Adding the project folder to .gitignore, has no effect, it is still "tracked" by git. From the git documentation:

A gitignore file specifies intentionally untracked files that Git should ignore. Files already tracked by Git are not affected;

We have many other solutions I would like to consider:

• git hooks
• CI checks/helpers
• https://alphaefficiency.com/git-stop-tracking-file

@rgaudin thoughs?

Let put this problem aside for the moment and move forward with the project.