Is there a way to run using --aot-only on iOS Simulator with Xamarin.iOS?

Question

When I test my application directly on the device, it crashes because I'm trying to JIT compile the method. I know why these crashes happen, I'm just trying to make them appear when I test on the simulator. This is much easier than deploying the device every time (it also takes less time).

I tried adding --aot-only to the mtouch arguments, but I got the error "Unknown command line argument".

Answer 1

No, there is no AOT compiler for x86.

Now, even if it were like this:

a) it becomes much slower. Actually, it would be like making devices. The only time that was saved would be for deployment (which is not the largest part of the build / deployment time);

b) still give you different results than iOS devices. The iOS simulator is in many ways different from iOS devices, so testing on devices is very important.

Notes:

• Many JIT exceptions are associated with using value types inside generics. This is largely fixed in versions 6.3.x (beta);

• There are tricks to make your device faster. You can find here in stackoverflow and (soon) a video about my Evolve 2013 presentation should be available.