iOS - Deprecated Bitcode support

Starting from SDK 6.15 (November 7th 2022), Scandit removed bitcode support (release note: https://docs.scandit.com/data-capture-sdk/ios/release-notes/6.15.html#deprecations).

This decision directly follows Apple’s guidelines, as bitcode started being deprecated since Xcode 14 (September 12th 2022).
Indeed, from Apple’s release note of Xcode 14 (https://developer.apple.com/documentation/xcode-release-notes/xcode-14-release-notes), we read that:

Starting with Xcode 14, bitcode is no longer required for watchOS and tvOS applications, and the App Store no longer accepts bitcode submissions from Xcode 14.

Xcode no longer builds bitcode by default and generates a warning message if a project explicitly enables bitcode: “Building with bitcode is deprecated. Please update your project and/or target settings to disable bitcode.”

The capability to build with bitcode will be removed in a future Xcode release. IPAs that contain bitcode will have the bitcode stripped before being submitted to the App Store. Debug symbols can only be downloaded from App Store Connect / TestFlight for existing bitcode submissions and are no longer available for submissions made with Xcode 14. (86118779)

Bitcode is a serialised version of LLVM’s Intermediate Representation.
Apple has now reached a point where all of its new hardware uses arm64 and no longer requires the flexible back-ends provided by LLVM (the last iPhone with a non-arm64 hardware was the iPhone 5).
This also means that the “optimisation to reduce the app’s size” bitcode was initially used for is no longer valid, as there are no more different architectures around and the building target will be unique.

As “the capability to build with bitcode will be removed in a future Xcode release“ and “IPAs that contain bitcode will have the bitcode stripped before being submitted to the App Store” (from the release note reported above), Scandit decided to remove bitcode support.

This means that we have no plans to support it again in the future, unless Apple will decide to do so.