Solution found: At most one Xcode project can be open that contains your shared SwiftUI views. Read on for final details on this crazy journey
The plot thickens... Now the project where it started to magically work now fails again. I also found no differences in project settings between all my attempted projects.
Also, the original project the houses that shared SwiftUI view... it too now fails with cannot preview in this file... Zapping that project's derived data fixes the issue.
Re-opened separate project that had worked above. Still fails. Zapped its derived data. Preview still fails. Zapped shared project's derived data. Preview works!
Appears that derived data that is messing up everything. NOTE: For my shared views, I had "wrapped them" inside their own project. But this is most likely messing things up since I have a single SwiftUI file I want to share, but the build system cannot deal with that setup.
Then tried the following (also fails). Created a simple folder structure on my data drive (IIKit folder containing a Views subfolder containing IIAboutView.swift). Deleted all derived data. If I open one of my app project, preview works. Once I try to work on another project (even when closing the first), preview dies there. Re-opening the original project, preview dies there too.
My derived data is set to "Unique". Tried "Shared" same issues... but then...
Previews started to work again. Then it finally clicked. As long you only have one Xcode project open at any given time that uses the shared SwiftUI view source, all is well! I can easily now repeat the issue by opening a second Xcode project. Previews now fail with that error. You have to then close all Xcode projects and just open one.
I believe during this morning's vast majority of attempts, I had my IIKit project open.
Not a huge deal to only have a single Xcode project open at a time. At least a workaround exists. Will though still file a bug.