Do I need to Embed Crashlytics / Fabric frameworks?

Question

I am linking my iOS app against Crashlytics however unlike other frameworks (e.g. Hockeyapp) that you need to also then Embed within the app, Crashlytics does not instruct anywhere that we need to do this. Is the framework then just a 'fake framework' with a static library that gets linked at compile time? Will I run into any issues if I don't embed Fabric and Crashlytics into my app's Frameworks folder?

Answer 1

It is a fake framework with a static library inside. The same is true by default for HockeyApp and most other 3rd party "frameworks". Native frameworks require iOS 8, so if you want to support older iOS versions those can not be used.

You should not embed these into your app, actually you should get a warning or even error when trying to upload them to iTunes Connect when having them embedded in your app bundle.

An easy way to check if it is a real dynamic framework is to run dwarfdump --uuid your.framework in a terminal. If it shows UUIDs per platform, then it is a dynamic framework, otherwise not.