linking objective-c categories in a static library - ios

Question

I am developing a plugin for an iOS application. I am compiling it into a .a file which is then used by the main xcode project.
So far I have create a category of the UIDevice class in this library. When I run the main project using this library it crashes due to an unrecognized selector
-[UIDevice platform]: unrecognized selector sent to instance
platform is one of the fuinctions I added via the category.
So I thought it wasn't linking those functions at all and added a c function to the same file as the UIDevice category then called it from my code .
This time the main project ran fine... So I thought maybe it was something else i did and removed the C function. But lo and behold it crashed again due to unrecognized selector..
My questions:
Why does xcode ignore the category definition unless I call a function declared in the same file?
Is there an xcode setting i can change to make it include these methods from the UIDevice category regardless of whether I call a function from that file or not?
cheers

Answer 1

Check out Building Objective-C static libraries with categories:
Objective-C does not define linker symbols for each function (or
method, in Objective-C) - instead, linker symbols are only generated
for each class. If you extend a pre-existing class with categories,
the linker does not know to associate the object code of the core
class implementation and the category implementation. This prevents
objects created in the resulting application from responding to a
selector that is defined in the category.
To resolve this issue, the target linking against the static library
must pass the -ObjC option to the linker. This flag causes the linker
to load every object file in the library that defines an Objective-C
class or category. While this option will typically result in a larger
executable (due to additional object code loaded into the
application), it will allow the successful creation of effective
Objective-C static libraries that contain categories on existing
classes.
Important: For 64-bit and iPhone OS applications, there is a
linker bug that prevents -ObjC from loading objects files from static
libraries that contain only categories and no classes. The workaround
is to use the -all_load or -force_load flags.
Source: #albertamg (linking objective-c categories in a static library)

Answer 2

I have had the same problem. A method defined in a category defined in a subproject resulted in an unrecognized selector exception. (In fact, this manifested as inability to specify an UILabel subclass in Interface Builder; the XIB contained the class shown in IB (UILabel or UIView, depending on what I dragged there), rather than the class that I have typed in, and that looked as a weird XCode bug.)
The solution that worked for me has been to use -force_load:
In the left-hand panel, select your main project (the root item). On the right, you will see PROJECT and TARGETS. Select TARGETS.
Go to "Build Settings"(in the upper bar) -- "Linking" -- "Other linker flags" and, assuming your subproject is called XXXXX, add
-force_load ${BUILT_PRODUCTS_DIR}/libXXXXX.a
there (the item has two subitems, Debug and Release, but you click on this compound item so that if affects both Debug and Release).
Note that -force_load works for a single library, and you may need to specify a separate -force_load for each subproject library.

Answer 3

I had this issue and spent near 1 hour to resolve it. Thanks god! it's been done. Methods which are defined should be static type!