How to use CocoaPods with multiple Framework subprojects - ios

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

Answer 3

I'm not entirely sure your issue is the same as mine, but I'm going to leave my solution here just-in-case someone has a similar issue.
I have a project with multiple sub-projects I use to modularize my code (and potentially prepare to extract to my own private pods).
I had the issue of one importing an external pod to one of the sub-projects, and receiving a dyld error due to a "missing image".
I found this Medium article from which I concluded that I had to always include the pods in the main project for the sub-projects to be able to find them. Neither of my external pods are used in the main project.
( https://medium.com/#akfreas/how-to-use-cocoapods-with-your-internal-ios-frameworks-192aa472f64b )
(I'm probably not writing the podfile as correctly or efficiently as I could, but this seems to fix my issue)
My podfile is therefore as follows:
abstract_target "RandomName" do
target "MainProject" do
inherit! :complete
workspace './MainProject.xcodeproj'
pod 'Moya', '~> 13.0'
pod 'KeychainSwift', '~> 17.0'
end
target "ModuleA" do
project './ModuleA/ModuleA.xcodeproj'
workspace './ModuleA/ModuleA.xcodeproj'
pod 'Moya', '~> 13.0'
end
target "ModuleB" do
project './ModuleB/ModuleB.xcodeproj'
workspace './ModuleB/ModuleB.xcodeproj'
pod 'KeychainSwift', '~> 17.0'
end
end