native-api-bindgen Beta
Get started

Apple SDK policy

Not legal advice. This document describes engineering policy. Organizations should perform their own legal review before commercial redistribution.

Mechanism (as implemented)#

  • The SDK is located with xcode-select/xcrun; headers are read in place from the locally installed Xcode by the Xcode toolchain's own libclang. Nothing from the SDK is copied into the repository, the generator, or published packages.
  • The extractor keeps declarations, symbol names, types, nullability and availability metadata only. Header comments and Apple documentation are not copied; generated docs contain the Objective-C signature, availability lines and (optionally) links to developer.apple.com.
  • Generated Dart output (apple/*.dart) carries a Source SDK: Apple SDK <version> header and is local-only by default (distribution.generatedArtifacts: local-only). audit-license reports such files as generated-sdk-binding (WARN, LEGAL_REVIEW_REQUIRED before redistribution).
  • No absolute SDK paths are embedded in IR or generated code (tested).
  • Clang AST dumps, precompiled headers and module caches (.pch, .pcm, .ast, JSON AST) are never written to the repository; audit-license blocks them (clang-ast-dump) and .gitignore excludes them.

We will not:

  • vendor Apple SDKs or commit any Apple SDK file (headers, .tbd, .framework, .xcframework, binaries) to Git;
  • publish Apple framework binaries copied from Xcode;
  • copy Apple documentation bodies into generated packages or scrape and republish Apple documentation;
  • expose private Apple APIs as supported (E005), or provide guidance on App Store policy evasion.

We may, subject to the Xcode and Apple SDKs Agreement (https://developer.apple.com/support/terms/), generate bindings on the developer's own machine from the SDK installed with their Xcode. Generated output will contain declarations, binding code, symbol names, availability metadata, developer-authored text and links to developer.apple.com.

Tests use synthetic Objective-C headers written for this project, never copies of SDK headers. Automated checks (audit-license) detect Mach-O binaries, framework bundles, Apple copyright banners typical of SDK headers, and Xcode SDK paths, and block them.

Apple, iOS, iPadOS, macOS, Xcode, Objective-C and Swift are trademarks of Apple Inc. This project is not affiliated with or endorsed by Apple.

Source: docs/legal/apple.md