I have a specific scenario I am trying to overcome and have yet to find a solution (if one exists) to my problem.
I am building a framework that can be used inside of other applications. This framework contains static libraries.
Now, inside my framework, if I want to add classes that use APIs from Xcode12, I would also want my framework to be able to compile in Xcode11.
This could obviously lead to compilation issues as I have no control of my framework inside other applications and as my framework will already be turned into a binary file (.a). Adding any build script to the frameworks' build phases won't be relevant.
I have been trying to look for similar scenarios or solutions for this problem, but have yet to find anything substantial.
Is there any way to overcome this or am I trying to do something that is impossible?
Related
Thanks for spending time reading my question.
I've been working as an iOS developer for more than 2 years and today I still feel shame because I don't know how to deal with frameworks. I've build some projects using my own frameworks, but I've never understood exactly what's the best practice doing this.
Lets see the following example:
Project -> FrameworkA -> AFNetworking - Charts - FMDB - more
So, I have a big FrameworkA with mostly all the app behavior and then a small project referencing this FrameworkA and customizing just icons, texts and images. I use to manage dependencies with CocoaPods and I would like to use it with FrameworkA. By this I could reference external libraries easily, but it seems it doesn't work for frameworks, only for projects. So, my questions is: how can I add AFNetworking, Charts, FMDB, etc to my FrameworkA and then reference the framework form my project?
I appreciate if you can give me some idea using CocoaPods or any other dependency manager. I don't like the old way by doing this manually.
I hope my case is clear.
Thanks!
It sounds like you are asking how to embed external frameworks such as AFNetworking into a framework you are developing, and then use that framework in your app.
This is what's known as embedded frameworks where one framework is stored within another. Generally speaking it's not a great idea and should be avoided because it can cause version clash issues.
The way I'd recommend doing this is to use CocoaPods or Carthage to link the external frameworks (AFNetworking, etc) into your framework project. But do to try to embedded them.
Then in your app project, again use CocoaPods or Carthage to link in your framework (you won't need to link the external ones unless you are directly using them in the app code). Then add the necessary build steps to copy both your framework file and all the external framework files to the finished app's framework directory.
I'd like to create a framework using Cocoa Touch Framework Project in Swift. However, I'm building this framework on top of another framework called RNCryptor, which is Objective-C based. I've seen various tutorials on how to create a framework in Xcode but none has covered a framework with its own dependency.
I tried to create a framework project and then using CocoaPods to manage its dependencies. However, there are errors appeared: 'Check Dependencies' Unable to run command...'
So the question is: is it possible to create a framework on top of another framework in Xcode. And if so, how?
Frameworks should never embed other frameworks directly. This leads to collisions if the importing project or any other framework also includes that framework. Instead, you need to tell your consumer that they also need to include your dependency. CocoaPods will do this for you automatically, so you should let it. (If you're having trouble with CocoaPods dependencies, you should ask a question about that and get it cleared up. The whole point of CocoaPods is to manage these kinds of things.)
Note that I will be releasing the Swift version of RNCryptor into beta today (or tomorrow, but I really hope today). This version bridges to ObjC and will be the preferred version going forward. (The ObjC version will continue to be available of course for projects that cannot or don't want to include Swift.)
I know of familiar tutorials on this, but introduction of framework XCode 6 template has changed the game.
I already watched WWDC 2014 video about building modern frameworks but it talks more about building extensions, framework & app all inside single project. It does not specify if the framework I make with it is truly reusable across any project.
I am building framework the XCode 6 way (File->New Project->Framework and Library->Cocoa Touch Framework), but when I import it inside my test app project (separate from framework project) - I keep getting various errors.
Example: Include of non-modular header inside framework, and so on.
I know this is not what it says, and there are quite some missing steps in whatever I am doing. The older tricks may have worked for everyone, but I simply don't find which way to follow after XCode 6.
For example, there is some folder structure that a framework needs, but XCode 6 doesn't comply to it while building it. Is it right? If not, how can I change the way the XCode builds framework folder hierarchy?
Do I go back to old school or am I screwing some tiny thing in XCode 6 that I am unable to create a reusable framework?
I am not sure if you are trying to build a framework with Objective-C or Swift as your question doesn't state it. I've encountered errors you are mentioning with Swift so I'll give you my method to build Swift frameworks.
I found the process for Objective-C to be very straightforward and well documented, so I'll skip this.
As for Swift, there are a few things to consider. First, Swift static libraries are not supported, so you must exclusively use a framework (aka dynamic library) when linking an app to a library.
Here are the steps:
Create the Framework using New > Project under IOS > Framework & Library, select Cocoa Touch Framework
To avoid the "ld: warning: directory not found for option..." goto Library Search Paths in Build Settings for your target and delete the paths.
You can't mix Objective-C with Swift so don't even consider adding the Swift-Header bridge file in your code.
There are some cases in swift where you need to import code from unexposed Frameworks. I've successfully used the module-map inside the framework to deal with these case.
I also select CLANG_ALLOW_NON_MODULAR_INCLUDES_IN_FRAMEWORK_MODULES = YES in the Build Settings to solve 'include of non-modular header inside framework module'. That seems to work
I make sure that the header file that gets generated is marked as Public (not Project). Click on the file and you'll see the selection in the inspector under 'Target Membership'
You may run into some bizarre error messages when building. Xcode has a tendency to report linker errors when your code can't compile correctly resulting in missing files the linker needs to output its binaries. Sometimes XCode won't show the errors in the files you are compiling and you need to go manually on the build output and go back to the files. Some other time, you'll get a problem where you need to delete the cache. Those issues I call XCode blues and deal with it constantly. I found this type of problems happens more often when building libraries. The rest should work as expected.
I'm build a Framework for iOS and my framework has AFNetworking as dependency.
So what is the best practice to include AFNetworing? Reading other posts (specially this question here) i came up with three options:
Copy all the .h.m files from AFNetworing in to my project and compile my framework with it. But according to this, it will possible cause a situation where some third part developer using my Framework are already using AFNetworking and will get a compile-time error that some class is declared twice.
Use CocoaPods and link AFNetworking to my Framework. This is causing this error: -lPods is not an object file (not allowed in a library).
Build something like the Aeris SDK where the third part developer using my Framework will be responsibly to add AFNetworking to their project.
I think that option 3 is the best but i don't know how to do that. How can i dev my framework calling AFNetworking classes/methods but do not include on the final framework product?
Thanks!
That's a very bad practice to use third party library in you library.
Ideally you should avoid doing that.
But if you really need it, you can define and add prefixes to class names.
Refer this article Avoiding dependency collisions in iOS static library managed by CocoaPods
Ok. I decided to go with the option 3.
A just added all the header files from any third-party lib to the my framework project (you can also add the .m files but not include them on the static library target).
And a i also documented everything, so developers using my framework will know what are the dependencies and how to include/install them on their own projects (including third-party lib versions, CocoaPods support, etc).
I decided not to go with option 1 because that will cause some situations where a project will have two copies of the same lib compiled on the final app. Even if a change the namespace for the libs on my framework code (to prevent "duplicated symbols" errors) that will still cause some other possible problems like an APP with larger size, possible bugs related to two or more instances of the same lib running together, etc...
I am currently building a library which should be used internally in a few iOS projects but should also be distributed to customers accessing our services with the library. The Library itself consists purely of C++ code and I am basically able to create Apps with it on iOS which work fine. My problem is creating a single, easily distributable file that can be given out to customers which can easily install them, use the provided headers and don't need to have the headaches that I am currently facing when it comes to linking.
Our code depends on two other projects, namely boost and websocketpp. For boost there is the script on github which I took to generate a framework. For websocketpp, I imported it into XCode and used the scripts from this github project to build a framework. I added both frameworks to my (potential) framework as dependencies and used the same script to build one.
I have an app using my library as a sub-project working fine. Even including the framework into the project and running it on a device works fine. So far so good.
However, trying to create an archive of the App project lead to several questions and headaches.
My library did not seem to contain the code for all architectures. So I tried to archive the Framework projects, which after small modifications in the build scripts to use different locations to search for headers worked fine.
It does not seem to contain all binary code or references to local files (i.e. my specific location of boost). I gathered that from Linker errors that I still get that tell me that some boost calls could not be satisfied.
The second issue made me think that I am must be doing something fundamentally wrong and my intuition tells me that it can't be that difficult and "hackish" to create frameworks or libraries for others for iOS development.
As you probably have found out by now, I am not very experienced when it comes to iOS and I am wondering if I am missing something fundamentally. So, I am sure that this question is rather broad, so some more concrete questsions:
Is there a(nother) way to generate some kind of distributable (preferably a framework) which contains: my public headers, my binary code compiled for all platforms supported for iOS development, the binary code of dependencies?
Is the only way to do that by adding some handwritten scripts to the build process?
I have the feeling that the information I found is quite outdated since it's older than a year and mostly refers to Xcode 4.2 or 4.3 -- so has there anything changed in this regard recently?
For example one error I get is:
File is universal (2 slices) but does not contain a(n) armv7s slice: <file>
The <file> slice is the path to the file in the framework in the Products folder of a different XCode workspace (the library was build in a different workspace then the app). I dropped the framework folder into the project for this test from a completely different location.
What is going on here?
Why does it keep referencing to some internal XCode directory?
How do I properly export it?
Since I guess my setup is probably skrewed up and weird from all the different things I tried up to now: How does this setup look like in a ideal situation?
Yes, there are some questions regarding this on SO already, however, either I don't see or don't understand in those replies:
...how to handle depencies of my code to other third-party code properly.
...how to generate a distributable file.
Have you checked your project build phase under Compile Sources and Copy Files to see if you are including your framework source files in your build?
You may also try the C/C++ Library template under OSX -> Framework & Library.
Finally, there's also kstenerud’s iOS Universal Framework, which I found very useful. I wrote a few articles in my blog on using it.