[Bug]: Never gives Claude the full output #177
Description
Bug Description
When running unit tests, XcodeBuildMCP never gives Claude the full output, effectively making it useless. It ends up having to run xcodebuild manually anyway, eg:
⏺ xcodebuildmcp - Test Simulator (MCP)(extraArgs: ["-only-testing:Tests"])
⎿ Error: ❌ [stderr] 2026-01-17 15:25:16.321 xcodebuild[72399:38691874] [MT] IDETestOperationsObserverDebug: 150.506 elapsed -- Testing started completed.
❯ its taken you 10 minutes and you still haven't figured out what tests are failing. i can find this out within 10 seconds when building in xcode. how can we speed this process up to help you find failing tests faster?
⏺ You're right, this is frustrating. The XcodeBuildMCP tool isn't giving me the actual test results in its output. Let me try a different approach - I'll look at the test files directly based on your git status which shows
changes in test files.
⏺ Bash(xcodebuild test -project App.xcodeproj -scheme App -destination 'platform=iOS Simulator,name=iPhone Air' -only-testing:AppTests 2>&1 | grep -E "(Test C…) timeout: 5m 0s
⎿ ** TEST FAILED **
Test case 'Tests/test1()' passed on 'Clone 1 of iPhone Air - App (77270)' (0.000 seconds)
Test case 'Test/test2()' passed on 'Clone 1 of iPhone Air - App (77270)' (0.000 seconds)
I think that there should be an argument allowing Claude to specify that it wants the entire output. A lot of the time, it is trying to run entire test suites, and it needs to know exactly what has failed. Perhaps the MCP could even take the response from the test run and trim it down so that it contains a succinct response eg:
PASSED: test4()
FAILED: test1(), test2(), test3()
At the moment, I am strongly considering just disabling the MCP because it takes ten minutes to get to the point where it has to use xcodebuild manually anyway.
Debug Output
⏺ xcodebuildmcp - Test Simulator (MCP)(extraArgs: ["-only-testing:Tests"])
⎿ Error: ❌ [stderr] 2026-01-17 15:25:16.321 xcodebuild[72399:38691874] [MT] IDETestOperationsObserverDebug: 150.506 elapsed -- Testing started completed.
❯ its taken you 10 minutes and you still haven't figured out what tests are failing. i can find this out within 10 seconds when building in xcode. how can we speed this process up to help you find failing tests faster?
⏺ You're right, this is frustrating. The XcodeBuildMCP tool isn't giving me the actual test results in its output. Let me try a different approach - I'll look at the test files directly based on your git status which shows
changes in test files.
⏺ Bash(xcodebuild test -project App.xcodeproj -scheme App -destination 'platform=iOS Simulator,name=iPhone Air' -only-testing:AppTests 2>&1 | grep -E "(Test C…) timeout: 5m 0s
⎿ ** TEST FAILED **
Test case 'Tests/test1()' passed on 'Clone 1 of iPhone Air - App (77270)' (0.000 seconds)
Test case 'Test/test2()' passed on 'Clone 1 of iPhone Air - App (77270)' (0.000 seconds)
Editor/Client
Claude Code 2.1.9
MCP Server Version
Latest
LLM
Opus 4.5
MCP Configuration
"mcpServers": {
"xcodebuildmcp": {
"type": "stdio",
"command": "npx",
"args": [
"-y",
"@smithery/cli@latest",
"run",
"cameroncooke/xcodebuildmcp"
],
"env": {
"INCREMENTAL_BUILDS_ENABLED": "true",
"XCODEBUILDMCP_SENTRY_DISABLED": "true"
}
},Steps to Reproduce
- Ask it to run tests.
Expected Behavior
It is able to run tests and give Claude a succinct, full summary of what tests passed/failed.
Actual Behavior
Not giving full information (see description)