What is Cocoapods?

What is Cocoapods? I've seen that a lot of developers have been using Pods when developing apps to install APIs, but I'm not grasping why you couldn't just import the files manually. What is their purpose, and how are they helpful?

"CocoaPods is a dependency manager for Swift and Objective-C Cocoa projects. It has over 30 thousand libraries and is used in over 1.9 million apps. CocoaPods can help you scale your projects elegantly." via http://cocoapods.org

Essentially, it helps you incorporate 3rd party libraries, frameworks, into your product without worrying about how to set them up and configure your project, which at times could be a huge pain.

Regarding why can't you just include files in your project?

• Since these are 3rd party so you will have to download and copy them to your project every time there is a new version? Lets say, you have 10 libs or frameworks in your project, now imagine the time it will take you to check if anyone of them has any new version that you want to update? and Worst if something does not work, you need to revert back to previous version? It does take time and is a nuisance, with CocoaPods you simply type pod update and updates the ones that have newer versions available.

• Now If you want v1.1 of one particular library? How easy would it be for you to skim through Git commit history to find out which one you need? With CocoaPods, you simply say pod 'AFrameworkLib', '1.1'

• Every lib requires setting up your project with a certain set of configuration to make them work, doing it for 10 or so libraries and then fixing conflicts is pain in itself. With CocoaPods, its taken care of automatically.

• Last but not least, you have to include licenses for all 3rd party libraries you are using to provide credit to original developer of that library. Imagine copying 10 license docs and making sure they are up to date? CocoaPod automatically creates an acknowledgement file in your project that you can simply include somewhere appropriate.

From https://cocoapods.org:

> CocoaPods manages library dependencies for your Xcode projects. > > The dependencies for your projects are specified in a single text file > called a Podfile. CocoaPods will resolve dependencies between > libraries, fetch the resulting source code, then link it together in > an Xcode workspace to build your project. > > Ultimately the goal is to improve discoverability of, and engagement > in, third party open-source libraries by creating a more centralised > ecosystem.

Project link: link

Specs (third-party tools):link

Getting started guide: link

CocoaPods is a dependency management tool for objective-C projects similar to what Maven's for Java projects, which is written in Ruby and is made of several Ruby Gems. The idea is that once you add the third party libraries to your project you'll no longer need to check if there's any newer versions. CocoaPods will handle that for you. It also makes reversing back to a certain version of the library super easy. To use it, follow the following steps. More detail can be found on the official web site at http://cocoapods.org

1. Run the following command on your mac

> sudo gem install cocoapods

2. Search cocoapods.org for your desired libraries, then create a text file called Podfile in your Xcode project directory, with entries like

>

   source 'https://github.com/CocoaPods/Specs.git'
   platform :ios, '8.0'

   pod 'AFNetworking'
   pod 'ARAnalytics', '~> 2.7'

For each library you can optionally specify a minimum version.

3. Then you run these commands to initiate all necessary components in your project directory

> pod setup pod install open YourApp.xcworkspace

Now your project is ready to go. Note the last command in the above is opening YourApp.xcworkspace, not YourApp.xcodeproj, otherwise you'll get "library not found -lPods" error when building your app.

With cocoapods or any dependency manager you get specify a framework along with a version of it to be used.

This way all devs of the team have the same version installed.

The logic of it very similar to package.json + package-lock.json or Gemfile + Gemfile.lock where you list all your node or gem dependencies.

---

Beyond that every project, language has its own convention on whether or not commit the actual files of the dependencies or not ie ALL projects do include the list of dependencies and versions.

For iOS there are two schools of thoughts when it comes to committing the pods folder

• One school of thought looks at your pods directory as derived data. As long as you have both your podfile and lock file checked in your project, and you should...then anybody can in theory recreate that environment at any time just by running pod install. ie you don't need to commit the pods project <— This approach requires every user to install Cocoapods. It's also much more similar to how the javascript, node world works. The server just looks into your package.json and downloads your dependencies for you.

• The other school of thought believes because your pods directory contains essential files needed to run your project...you should absolutely check it in. That way anybody could download your entire repository and run it. No other steps required. This is easier for newbie developers which don't have experience with Cocoapods as compilation of the project doesn't require you to run any commands. Though this approach might cause your repository to get bloated and you could potentially run into pod merge conflicts. Pod merge conflicts can be resolved as easily. Most iOS projects are doing it like this.

_{This two bullets above are mainly derived from this awesome video CocoaPods and Lockfiles}

It's also worth mentioning that:

The Podfile.lock is at the root (as well as the Podfile) because it is required to commit it into git that's why they are exceptions, while anything inside Pods/ are not required to be committed for things to work (even if some people do for caching reasons or whatnot), as everything in there can be regenerated from the Podfile and lockfile

The above paragraph was written by Olivier Halligon

What is a Podfile?

It's a list of your pod dependencies per target (e.g. your Apple Watch or Test targets can have dependencies that are different from your main iOS App). You as the developer list your dependencies along with the version you want. e.g. in Signals Podfile, want to use YapDatabase/SQLCipher pod then you add that to your Podfile like this.

pod 'YapDatabase/SQLCipher', :git => 'https://github.com/signalapp/YapDatabase.git', branch: 'signal-release'

What is a Podfile.lock?

It's a snapshot of your pod dependencies along with their dependencies and the git url along with the tag/version/commit it has used. This file is generated for you when you run pod install or pod update. You do not make changes to it yourself.

If you've added YapDatabase/SQLCipher as a pod, then the Podfile.lock will generate these lines for you:

- YapDatabase/SQLCipher (3.1.1):
  - YapDatabase/SQLCipher/Core (= 3.1.1)
  - YapDatabase/SQLCipher/Extensions (= 3.1.1)

The locks are a great way to catch discrepancies between two branches — assuming they've both updated the same lines.

What is a podspec?

Something like this. It has the name of the pod, version, homepage, authors, source, the source file types it needs to pull in.

Pod::Spec.new do |spec|
  spec.name         = 'Reachability'
  spec.version      = '3.1.0'
  spec.license      = { :type => 'BSD' }
  spec.homepage     = 'https://github.com/tonymillion/Reachability'
  spec.authors      = { 'Tony Million' => '[email protected]' }
  spec.summary      = 'ARC and GCD Compatible Reachability Class for iOS and OS X.'
  spec.source       = { :git => 'https://github.com/tonymillion/Reachability.git', :tag => 'v3.1.0' }
  spec.source_files = 'Reachability.{h,m}'
  spec.framework    = 'SystemConfiguration'
end

What's the diff between podspec and podfile?

• podspec defines the pod itself. (maintained by pod developers)
• podfile lists the pod dependencies of a project. (maintained by app developers)

What does a real Podfile and Podfile.lock look like?

You can compare Signal's Podfile and Podfile.lock

Or compare Wordpress's Podfile and Podfile.lock

Both schools of thoughts will have to commit Podfile and Podfile.lock. But the 2nd school of thought will also commit a gigantic Pods project