iOS CI and binary releases

[freakboy3742]

Feature or enhancement

Proposal:

Proposal:

At the PyCon US 2025 language summit, we discussed adding the following features to the mobile platforms:

• Continuous integration on GitHub Actions
• Official binary releases on python.org

Details of the discussion are in the link below, but there was broad support for both ideas. #137242 tracked the implementation of this change for Android; this ticket is for tracking the equivalent work on iOS.

Following the same pattern as Android, there are at least 4 changes required to complete this:

• Adding a CI job for iOS
• Adding the changes to release-tools to add iOS artefacts (Add iOS XCframework build to release artefacts. release-tools#365)
• Adding references to python.org (Add iOS release support. pythondotorg#2980)
• Updating the release checklist to include iOS artefacts No longer required

Adding iOS to CI is a relatively straightforward task (especially following #138171); however, there are at least two outstanding questions around official iOS release artefacts:

1. Does the iOS XCframework need to be signed? Apple provides tooling that would allow this, and users could verify that signature, but that signature is overwritten as part of using an XCFramework in an app.
2. Do we need to generate an SBOM for iOS installs? Android builds are produced without an SBOM (as are macOS installers, for that matter); is that an oversight on those release artefacts, or would an SBOM-less iOS install be acceptable?

Has this already been discussed elsewhere?

No response given

Links to previous discussion of this feature:

The Python Language Summit 2025: Python on Mobile - Next Steps

Linked PRs

• gh-140189: Add CI job to test iOS builds. #140190
• [3.14] gh-140189: Add CI job to test iOS builds. (GH-140190) #140696
• gh-140189: Use macos-14 runner for iOS CI tests #142444
• [3.14] gh-140189: Use macos-14 runner for iOS CI tests (GH-142444) #142494
• gh-140189: Temporarily allow CI failures for iOS #142365
• gh-140189: Revert "Temporarily allow CI failures for iOS (#142365)" #142660

[freakboy3742]

@sethmlarson Would be interested in your take on the SBOM question, and whether that's a blocker or a nice-to-have feature.