Processing a Xamarin.iOS executable before native compilation

Question

How can we hook into the Xamarin.iOS mdtool build in order to modify the app executable's MSIL before it is compiled to native? (Obfuscation is one scenario that needs this ability; there are likely other scenarios as well.)

Answer 1

mdtool simply runs a solution (or project) build. What's defined inside the projects will be executed from the tool. E.g. You can define Custom Commands in your project, adding operations:

• before build;
• build;
• after build;
• before clean;
• clean;
• after clean; and
• custom commands

Note that obfuscation is not very helpful (or needed) for Xamarin.iOS applications since you are not shipping the IL of your application (as everything is AOT'ed) as part of your release (non-debug) builds.