I have a piece of code that has a specific behavior under iOS9. However, I know that it didn't always behave in the manner it does under iOS9. I wanted to run it on previous versions, so I could discover when the behavior was fixed.
Unfortunately, Xcode 7 seems to only support simulators back to iOS 8.1.
Short of reinstalling previous iOS versions on an actual device, is there any way to install and run simulators for earlier iOS versions? Or, is there another method to accomplish my goal?
EDIT
This edit is to explain why I do not think this post is a duplicate, as indicated in the close request. Hopefully, in explaining why it is not a duplicate, it also better explains the issue and hopefully results in a solution.
@JeremyHuddlestonSequoia - Thanks for the input. That post has really good information. However, I don't consider this a duplicate for several reasons.
I already knew that information, and it didn't keep me from asking this question. So, for whatever reason, it does not give me what I'm looking for.
I don't consider questions to be duplicates if one is talking about the behavior of a beta release and the other is talking about the behavior oaf a production release.
I don't want to know how to install older simulators. I want to know if there is another way to run the simulators outside of the Xcode preferences. I think it is completely absurd that Apple have determined that nobody in the world needs to run older simulators with newer versions of Xcode. Thus, I'm looking for some alternative to the solutions in the possible duplicate question.
If there is no other way to install the simulators, maybe there is some online resource that has simulators available going back to iOSx.y that may be accessed, even if that access is for-pay. Or, maybe there is some online resource that runs stuff on actual devices, and I can submit my code to that resource.
Maybe there is some other way I haven't thought of for me to get the answers I am looking for. Basically, I want to know in which exact release of iOS a specific behavior changed. Thus, I want to run a small piece of code on different iOS versions until I witness the difference.
The fallback is to reinstall each OS on a device. Maybe someone knows of a way to do this programmatically so I can kick off the process and have it run on it's own. There are a bunch of possibilities, but I am unaware of what's out there to deal with this issue.
I was hoping that there was some way to install older simulators. The first paragraph of the original post explained my ultimate goal. The last sentence of the original post summed up the difference between this post and that post.
I'm not just looking for a way to install older simulators. That would be a WONDERFUL way to accomplish my goal. I'm looking for a way to test code on older iOS versions. Using the simulator is one possibility... if there is some way to convince Xcode to do it on something older than 8.1.
