The Podfile

<What is a Podfile?

The Podfile is a specification that describes the dependencies of the targets of one or more Xcode projects. The file should simply be named Podfile. All the examples in the guides are based on CocoaPods version 1.0 and onwards.

A Podfile can be very simple, this adds Alamofire to a single target:

target 'MyApp' do
  use_frameworks!
  pod 'Alamofire', '~> 3.0'
end

An example of a more complex Podfile linking an app and its test bundle:

source 'https://cdn.cocoapods.org/'
source 'https://github.com/Artsy/Specs.git'

platform :ios, '9.0'
inhibit_all_warnings!

target 'MyApp' do
  pod 'GoogleAnalytics', '~> 3.1'

  # Has its own copy of OCMock
  # and has access to GoogleAnalytics via the app
  # that hosts the test target

  target 'MyAppTests' do
    inherit! :search_paths
    pod 'OCMock', '~> 2.0.1'
  end
end

post_install do |installer|
  installer.pods_project.targets.each do |target|
    puts target.name
  end
end

If you want multiple targets to share the same pods, use an abstract_target.

# There are no targets called "Shows" in any Xcode projects
abstract_target 'Shows' do
  pod 'ShowsKit'
  pod 'Fabric'

  # Has its own copy of ShowsKit + ShowWebAuth
  target 'ShowsiOS' do
    pod 'ShowWebAuth'
  end

  # Has its own copy of ShowsKit + ShowTVAuth
  target 'ShowsTV' do
    pod 'ShowTVAuth'
  end
end

There is implicit abstract target at the root of the Podfile, so you could write the above example as:

pod 'ShowsKit'
pod 'Fabric'

# Has its own copy of ShowsKit + ShowWebAuth
target 'ShowsiOS' do
  pod 'ShowWebAuth'
end

# Has its own copy of ShowsKit + ShowTVAuth
target 'ShowsTV' do
  pod 'ShowTVAuth'
end

<Migrating from 0.x to 1.0

We have a blog post explaining the changes in depth.

<Specifying pod versions

When starting out with a project it is likely that you will want to use the latest version of a Pod. If this is the case, simply omit the version requirements.

pod 'SSZipArchive'

Later on in the project you may want to freeze to a specific version of a Pod, in which case you can specify that version number.

pod 'Objection', '0.9'

Besides no version, or a specific one, it is also possible to use logical operators:

  • '> 0.1' Any version higher than 0.1
  • '>= 0.1' Version 0.1 and any higher version
  • '< 0.1' Any version lower than 0.1
  • '<= 0.1' Version 0.1 and any lower version

In addition to the logic operators CocoaPods has an optimistic operator ~>:

  • '~> 0.1.2' Version 0.1.2 and the versions up to 0.2, not including 0.2 and higher
  • '~> 0.1' Version 0.1 and the versions up to 1.0, not including 1.0 and higher
  • '~> 0' Version 0 and the versions up to 1.0, not including 1.0 and higher

For more information, regarding versioning policy, see:

<Using the files from a folder local to the machine.

If you would like to develop a Pod in tandem with its client project you can use :path.

pod 'Alamofire', :path => '~/Documents/Alamofire'

Using this option CocoaPods will assume the given folder to be the root of the Pod and will link the files directly from there in the Pods project. This means that your edits will persist between CocoaPods installations. The referenced folder can be a checkout of your favourite SCM or even a git submodule of the current repo.

<From a podspec in the root of a library repo.

Sometimes you may want to use the bleeding edge version of a Pod, a specific revision or your own fork. If this is the case, you can specify that with your pod declaration.

To use the master branch of the repo:

pod 'Alamofire', :git => 'https://github.com/Alamofire/Alamofire.git'

To use a different branch of the repo:

pod 'Alamofire', :git => 'https://github.com/Alamofire/Alamofire.git', :branch => 'dev'

To use a tag of the repo:

pod 'Alamofire', :git => 'https://github.com/Alamofire/Alamofire.git', :tag => '3.1.1'

Or specify a commit:

pod 'Alamofire', :git => 'https://github.com/Alamofire/Alamofire.git', :commit => '0f506b1c45'

It is important to note, though, that this means that the version will have to satisfy any other dependencies on the Pod by other Pods.

The podspec file is expected to be in the root of the repo, if this library does not have a podspec file in its repo yet, you will have to use one of the approaches outlined in the sections below.

<< External resources

Using CocoaPods

Build with CocoaPods

Plugins

Contributing

Reference