Xcode search paths for public headers in dependencies

Question

I am trying to clean up some of my projects, and one of the things that are puzzling me is how to deal with header files in static libraries that I have added as "project dependencies" (by adding the project file itself). The basic structure is like this:

MyProject.xcodeproj
  Contrib
    thirdPartyLibrary.xcodeproj
  Classes
    MyClass1.h
    MyClass1.m
    ...

Now, the dependencies are all set up and built correctly, but how can I specify the public headers for "thirdPartyLibrary.xcodeproj" so that they are on the search path when building MyProject.xcodeproj. Right now, I have hard-coded the include directory in the thirdPartyLibrary.xcodeproj, but obviously this is clumsy and non-portable. I assume that, since the headers are public and already built to some temporary location in ~/Library (where the .a file goes as well), there is a neat way to reference this directory. Only.. how? An hour of Googling turned up blank, so any help is greatly appreciated!

Answer 1

If I understand correctly, I believe you want to add a path containing $(BUILT_PRODUCTS_DIR) to the HEADER_SEARCH_PATHS in your projects build settings.

As an example, I took an existing iOS project which contains a static library, which is included just in the way you describe, and set the libraries header files to public. I also noted that the PUBLIC_HEADERS_FOLDER_PATH for this project was set to "/usr/local/include" and these files are copied to $(BUILT_PRODUCTS_DIR)/usr/local/include when the parent project builds the dependent project. So, the solution was to add $(BUILT_PRODUCTS_DIR)/usr/local/include to HEADER_SEARCH_PATHS in my project's build settings.

HEADER_SEARCH_PATHS = $(BUILT_PRODUCTS_DIR)/usr/local/include

Your situation may be slightly different but the exact path your looking for can probably be found in Xcode's build settings. Also you may find it helpful to add a Run Script build phase to your target and note the values of various settings at build time with something like:

echo "BUILT_PRODUCTS_DIR " $BUILT_PRODUCTS_DIR
echo "HEADER_SEARCH_PATHS " $HEADER_SEARCH_PATHS
echo "PUBLIC_HEADERS_FOLDER_PATH " $PUBLIC_HEADERS_FOLDER_PATH
.
.
.
etc.