iOS8: Custom Swift Framework accessing external framework written in Objective-C

Question

I'm trying to create a custom framework called CouchbaseKit (a new target in Xcode) in Swift. Inside my CouchbaseKit, I need to access CouchBaseLite Framework that's entirely written in Obj-C. I'm using Cocoapods to manage CouchBaseLite and a couple of other frameworks. Below is my podfile.

Podfile

# Uncomment this line to define a global platform for your project
link_with ['CouchbaseKit']
# platform :ios, '8.0'

use_frameworks!
target 'CouchbaseDB' do
link_with ['CouchbaseKit']

pod 'couchbase-lite-ios'
pod 'SwiftyJSON', '~> 2.2.0'
pod 'Alamofire', '~> 1.2'
pod 'XCGLogger', '~> 2.0'
end

target 'CouchbaseDBTests' do
end

target 'CouchbaseKit' do
end

target 'CouchbaseKitTests' do
end

Pods inside the project:

For my TARGETS I have the following settings in Build Phases.

Define Module Yes

Allow Non-modular Includes in Framework Modules Yes

Problem: When I try to access the CouchbaseLite framework inside my CouchbaseKit (my custom framework), I get an error, "No such module 'CouchbaseLite' does not exist.

Tried:

1. Since the project is in Swift, I created an Objective-C File and Hit yes to "Would you like to configure an Objective-C bridging header?"

2. Even though Allow Non-modular Includes in Framework Modules is set to YES in all targets, I still get an error when I try to #import <CouchbaseLite/CouchbaseLite.h> in CouchbaseKit.h

Here is what my Build Phases looks like for my custom framework CouchbaseKit

Question: How can I see an external Objective-C framework (CouchasebaseLite) in my custom Swift framework?

Answer 1

CouchbaseLite on iOS is a static framework, i.e. its binary is a static library not a dylib. This means it's linked into your app as though it were a source file. For this reason you don't use import in Swift to access it; the classes are already in the same namespace as your app's classes.

Answer 2

Unfortunately Cocoapods 0.39 suffers from "Transitive Vendor Dynamic Libraries Unsupported" You'll see this with the newest couchbase-lite-ios release including the binary CouchbaseLite.framework. This unfortunately issue bit me so hard I had to refactor everything to use Carthage, and manually manage my frameworks in my final projects.

Speaking of which the binary released CouchbaseLite.framework is simply missing a module map.

Add one to: CouchbaseLite.framework/Modules/module.modulemap

framework module CouchbaseLite {
  umbrella header "CouchbaseLite.h"

  export *
  module * { export * }
}

You will then be able to include this framework into a bridging header, and have your dynamic framework nest properly. But you might need to switch to building your CouchbaseKit.framework to using Carthage like I did.