How to use CocoaPods with multiple Framework subprojects

Question

First of all, I've turned on use_framework! in Podfile.

Assume the main project is MAIN_APP, and two subprojects are FRAMEWORK_A and FRAMEWORK_B.

MAIN_APP requires FRAMEWORK_A and FRAMEWORK_B, and FRAMEWORK_B requires FRAMEWORK_A as well.

All projects/targets are using CocoaPods to manage third party libraries.

For now, my Podfile looks like:

target :MAIN_APP do     project 'MAIN_APP'     pod 'PodA' end  target :FRAMEWORK_A do     project 'FRAMEWORK_A'     pod 'PodB' end  target :FRAMEWORK_B do     project 'FRAMEWORK_B'     pod 'PodC' end 

I manually added FRAMEWORK_A to build settings of FRAMEWORK_B, and both FRAMEWORK_A and FRAMEWORK_B to build settings of MAIN_APP.

All code compiles well, but when running the MAIN_APP crashes because it cannot load Framework of PodB.

I know I can manually add PodB to MAIN_APP and FRAMEWORK_B as well, but is it possible to define this kind of target dependency in Podfile?

Btw, when pod install, I got the warning:

[!] The Podfile contains framework targets, for which the Podfile does not contain host targets (targets which embed the framework).

If this project is for doing framework development, you can ignore this message. Otherwise, add a target to the Podfile that embeds these frameworks to make this message go away (e.g. a test target).

As I know, I can use nested target for host targets like:

target :FRAMEWORK_A     target :MAIN_APP     end end 

So CocoaPods will setup MAIN_APP to use FRAMEWORK_A and inherit pod dependencies from FRAMEWORK_A. But seems I cannot do it with multiple dependencies like:

target :FRAMEWORK_A     target :MAIN_APP     end end target :FRAMEWORK_B     target :MAIN_APP     end end 

Because target :MAIN_APP cannot be declared twice.

Is there any better solutions instead of defining pod dependencies as a function in Podfile and include in all target?

Answer 1

This is a great question and I've struggled with a similar situation. This is my PodFile:

platform :ios, '8.0'  workspace 'mygreatapp.xcworkspace'  project 'app/MyGreatApp/MyGreatApp.xcodeproj' project 'platform/MyGreatFramework/MyGreatFramework.xcodeproj'  abstract_target 'This can say whatever you want' do      target 'MyGreatApp' do         project 'app/MyGreatApp/MyGreatApp.xcodeproj'         pod 'AFNetworking', '~> 2.6.0'         pod 'PromiseKit', '~> 1.5'         pod 'PromiseKit/Join'         pod 'KVOController', '~> 1.0'         pod 'FLAnimatedImage', '~> 1.0'         pod 'Crashlytics', '~> 3.3'         pod 'SSZipArchive'     end      target 'MyGreatAppTests' do         project 'app/MyGreatApp/MyGreatApp.xcodeproj'         pod 'OCMock', '~> 3.1'     end      target 'MyGreatFramework' do         project 'platform/MyGreatFramework/MyGreatFramework.xcodeproj'         pod 'SSZipArchive'     end      target 'MyGreatFrameworkTests' do         project 'platform/MyGreatFramework/MyGreatFramework.xcodeproj'         pod 'OCMock', '~> 3.1'     end      post_install do |installer|       installer.pods_project.targets.each do |target|         target.build_configurations.each do |config|           config.build_settings['ENABLE_BITCODE'] = 'NO'         end       end     end end 

As you can see I'm not using frameworks and I use an abstract_target to group it all together. I wish these kinds of dependencies were easier to do in CocoaPods. I know this doesn't really answer your question but it might be helpful nonetheless.

Answer 2

I think you can also get around this by just making FrameworkA and FrameworkB into local (static library) pods and it will de-duplicate everything for you and integrate it into the host app properly.

Examples: https://github.com/rob-keepsafe/PodFrameworksIssue

• master branch shows duplicate classes and umbrella frameworks like you have
• deduped branch makes the internal dynamic frameworks into local pods (as static libs) to de-dupe and still link in the dependencies