How to install a specific version of the SDK for the iPhone simulator in Xcode?

Question

A few weeks ago, I was working on a project that referenced the iPhoneSimulator 8.2 SDK. Today I went to continue working on the project, and suddenly I can not start the simulator. The following error message appears:

ERROR! Cannot find iPhoneSimulator SDK 8.2 in `/Applications/Xcode.app/Contents/Developer/Platforms/iPhoneSimulator.platform/Developer/SDKs/iPhoneSimulator8.2.sdk '

Of course, the SDK simulator no longer exists in this directory. So I opened Xcode, went to the download window and saw that it was no longer installed. I have no idea how this happened, but I assume that Xcode has updated itself and removed. So, I download and install the 8.2 SDK again. However, when he finishes, my project will still not work: I got the same error. After checking the file system, I see that Xcode actually installed the SDK 8.3, not 8.2, although the Xcode GUI says it installed 8.2.

I am running Xcode 6.3 (which is strange because I see that 6.3 was only released a couple of days ago and I did not install or update Xcode in a month).

Is there a way to download a specific version of the iPhoneSimulator SDK and manually install it?

Answer 1

You start iOS Simulator while working in iOS Simulator You create against the iOS Simulator SDK.

Unfortunately, this is confusing since the SDK and runtime are in the same place inside the Xcode.app package.

What you want to do is build against the latest iOS Simulator SDK (iOS 8.3 from Xcode 6.3) and run your application on the simulated device using the simulator time of iOS 8.2.

You can install the version of the iOS 8.2 simulator from Xcode by going to Xcode → Preferences → Downloads.