iOS Integration Testing With A Backend

I would like to test my iOS app using my backend. With the Android machine image, it seems that I can containerize my app and run it with Docker, but that doesn’t seem to be the case on the macOS image. I also considered using a remote Docker environment, but that does not allow directly accessing the services. The help section on this confused me a little. But it didn’t seem like my iOS simulator was going to be able to access the remote container.

What is the best practice here? Do I need to install all my backend dependencies in the macos environment with brew and run it directly there?

I know another option is to test by contract with the backend, but it would be nice to use the same approach for Android and iOS.

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Hi @alan-pie thanks for writing to the CircleCI community! Setting up , you can read more in this Support Article: Can I use Docker within the macOS executor?

Your suggestion to to install dependencies with brew would be a workaround given this limitation, but can result in issues as described in the above article and not something we support at this time.

An alternative solution would be CircleCI Runner, which allows you to run jobs on-premises. Please note you are required to be on the Scale Plan to utilize this.

Additionally, we have an open feature request to pre-install Docker on macOS images, which you can comment and vote on to share your use-case.

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