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CocoaPods

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Guillermo Sanchez edited this page Feb 23, 2021 · 42 revisions

Overview

CocoaPods is a dependency management system for iOS (and other Cocoa-based) projects. It is very similar in function and usage to npm for JavaScript and Bundler for Ruby.

Installing CocoaPods

⚠️ M1 Macbook Computers

Please follow these steps if you have an M1 macbook computer:

On your terminal

Install ffi sudo arch -x86_64 gem install ffi

Re-install dependency arch -x86_64 pod install

Install Brew

Install RVM

:::warning 💡 Getting issues? Try out this stackoverflow in case you encounter issues. :::

CocoaPods is packaged as a Ruby gem. Since Ruby comes with new OS X installations, you can install CocoaPods simply by running the following commands in a terminal:

Note: If you are running MacOS Catalina (MacOS 10.15.X) or Big Sur (MacOS 11) follow this guide before running the following command

sudo gem install -n /usr/local/bin cocoapods     # Install CocoaPods gem
pod setup                                        # Clones the CocoaPods specs repo to ~/.cocoapods

Note: There are alternate instructions if you need to perform a sudo-less install or install a beta version of CocoaPods.

Adding a Pod

You can find available Pods using the search box on the official CocoaPods site or using the Wantedly search. When you find a pod you want to add to your project, follow these steps:

Create the Podfile

You only need a single Podfile per project. The Podfile is a plain text file where you can add multiple pods.

  • From a terminal in the root directory of your project, run...

    pod init

Add dependencies to the Podfile

  • In the example below, we'll add Alamofire and a few others:

    # Uncomment the next line to define a global platform for your project
# platform :ios, '9.0'

# NOTE: Change the string below to the name of your project
target 'YOUR_APP_NAME' do
  # Comment the next line if you're not using Swift and don't want to use dynamic frameworks
  use_frameworks!

  # Pods for MyApp
  # This pulls in the latest version of Alamofire. IF you have an older version of Xcode, please use version 4.0 or check their documentation!
  pod 'AlamofireImage'
  
end

  • Refer to the podfile documentation to see versioning options and more complex use cases.

Download and integrate the dependencies into your project

  • From a terminal in the root directory of your project, run...

    pod install --verbose

  • CocoaPods currently forks the spec repo. If the pod install fails, you may need to update your current specs:

    pod repo update

Open the Xcode workspace

  • Close the project (MyApp.xcodeproject) if you have it open and open the workspace (MyApp.xcworkspace).

  • CocoaPods creates an additional project for all the dependencies so you need to open the .xcworkspace from now on (which will contain your original project and the pods project).:

    <Workspace version = "1.0">
<FileRef location = "group:ParseLab.xcodeproj"></FileRef>
<FileRef location = "group:Pods/Pods.xcodeproj"></FileRef>
</Workspace>

Swift Support

CocoaPods version 0.36 was the first version to add support for Swift with the use_frameworks! directive.

As long as your app targets iOS8+, you can enable Swift support by adding the use_frameworks! directive to your Podfile:

platform :ios, '8.0'
use_frameworks!    # Instruct CocoaPods to use dynamic frameworks instead of static libraries for Pods
...

Consuming Swift Libraries

With the use_frameworks! directive, you can now consume Swift libraries using CocoaPods! After you've added use_frameworks! to your Podfile, you can directly import Swift libraries from your Swift code using the framework name (i.e. import AFNetworking).

Consuming Objective-C Libraries from Swift

With the use_frameworks! directive, you can also consume Objective-C libraries from your Swift code without the need of a bridging header anymore. You'll be able to directly import the framework (i.e. import AFNetworking).

Potential Issue: Unfortunately, all Objective-C Pods haven't been updated to work with the new dynamic frameworks behavior. You might come across certain Objective-C Pods that no longer build after adding the use_frameworks! directive. In these cases you can either not use the use_frameworks! directive (you'll now need to create a bridging header) or manually edit the offending Pod to help it find the headers (as done in the linked issue).

Removing CocoaPods

If you want to fully remove all traces of CocoaPods from your Xcode project, there's a tool that can do this for you. Run the following command to install the tool:

sudo gem install cocoapods-deintegrate

And then navigate to the directory that contains your project (the same directory that has the .xcodeproj and Podfile files) and run the following command:

pod deintegrate

Note: This will remove all traces of CocoaPods from your project, but will leave 3 files hanging around on disk. If you want to fully remove all traces of CocoaPods, you'll also want to delete the following 3 files: Podfile, Podfile.lock, and *.xcworkspace.

Alternatives to CocoaPods

Carthage is an alternative dependency management system for Cocoa applications that has gained some traction recently. It prides itself on being a simple dependency manager that avoids the complexity of CocoaPods. To keep this simplicity, it doesn't automatically integrate the dependencies into your project (you must do that yourself). It also only supports iOS8 and above.

References

Hello Manh Okne

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