What is PodBuilder
PodBuilder is a complementary tool to CocoaPods that allows to prebuild pods into frameworks which can then be included into a project’s repo. Instead of committing pod’s source code you add its compiled counterpart. While there is a size penalty in doing so, which can be overcome by using Git-LFS, compilation times will decrease significantly because pod's source files no longer need to be recompiled very often. Additionally frameworks contain all architecture so they’re ready to be used both on any device and simulator.
Depending on the size of the project and number of pods this can translate in a significant reduction of compilation times (for a large project we designed this tool for we saw a 50% faster compile times, but YMMV).
Installation
Like CocoaPods PodBuilder is built with Ruby and will be installable with default version of Ruby available on macOS.
Unless you're using a Ruby version manager you should generally install using sudo as follows
$ sudo gem install pod-builder
You can the initialize your project to use the tool using the init command
$ cd path-to-your-repo;
$ pod_builder init
This will add a Frameworks folder which will contain all files needed and generated by the PodBuilder.
Podfile
The workflow is very similar to the one you're used to with CocoaPods. The most significant difference is that PodBuilder relies on 3 Podfiles:
1. Frameworks/Podfile (aka PodBuilder-Podfile)
This is your original Podfile and remains your master Podfile that you will update as needed. It is used by PodBuilder to determine which versions and dependencies need to be compiled when prebuilding.
2. Podfile (aka Application-Podfile)
Based on the one above but will replace precompiled frameworks with references to the local PodBuilder podspec. It is autogenerated and shouldn't be manually changed
3. Frameworks/Podfile.restore (aka Restore-Podfile)
This acts as a sort of lockfile and reflects the current state of what is installed in the application, pinning pods to a particular tag or commit. This will be particularly useful until Swift reaches ABI stability, because when you check out an old revision of your code you won't be able to get your project running unless the Swift frameworks were compiled with a same version of Xcode you're currently using. This file is used internally by PodBuilder and shouldn't be manually changed. It is autogenerated and shouldn't be manually changed
Commands
Podbuilder comes with a set of commands:
init: initializes a project to use PodBuilderdeintegrate: deintegrates PodBuilder's initializationbuild: prebuilts a specific pod declared in the PodBuilder-Podfilebuild_all: prebuilts all pods declared in the PodBuilder-Podfilerestore_all: rebuilts all pods declared in the Restore-Podfile fileinstall_sources: installs sources of pods to debug into prebuild frameworksswitch: switch between prebuilt, development or standard pod in the Application-Podfileclean: removes unused prebuilt frameworks, dSYMs and source files added by install_sourcessync_podfile: updates the Application with all pods declared in the PodBuilder-Podfile file
Commands can be run from anywhere in your project's repo that is required to be under git.
init command
This will sets up a project to use PodBuilder.
The following will happen:
- Create a Frameworks folder in your repo's root.
- Copy your original Podfile to Frameworks/Podfile (PodBuilder-Podfile)
- Add an initially empty PodBuilder.json configuration file
- Modify the original Podfile (Application-Podfile) with some minor customizations
- Create/Update your Gemfile adding the
gem 'pod-builder'entry
deintegrate command
This will revert init's changes.
build command
Running pod_builder build [pod name] will precompile the pod that should be included in the PodBuilder-Podfile.
The following will happen:
- Create one or more (if there are dependencies) .framework file/s under Frameworks/Rome along with its corresponding dSYM files (if applicable)
- Update the Application-Podfile replacing the pod definition with the precompiled ones
- Update/create the Podfile.restore (Restore-Podfile)
- Update/create PodBuilder.podspec which is a local podspec for your prebuilt frameworks (more on this later)
build_all command
As build but will prebuild all pods defined in PodBuilder-Podfile.
restore_all command
Will recompile all pods to the versions defined in the Restore-Podfile. You would typically use this when checking out an older revision of your project that might need to rebuild frameworks (e.g. You're using a different version of the Swift compiler) to the exact same version at the time of the commit.
install_sources command
When using PodBuilder you loose ability to directly access to the source code of a pod. To overcome this limitation you can use this command which downloads the pod's source code to Frameworks/Sources and with some tricks restores the ability to step into the pods code. This can be very helpful to catch the exact location of a crash when it occurs (showing something more useful than assembly code). It is however advisable to switch to the original pod when doing any advanced debugging during development of code that involves a pod.
switch command
Once you prebuild a framework you can change the way it is integrated in your project.
Using the switch command you can choose to integrate it:
- standard. Reverts to the default one used by CocoaPods
- development. The Development Pod used by CocoaPods
- prebuilt. Use the prebuilt pod
To support development pods you should specify the path(s) that contain the pods sources in Frameworks/PodBuilderDevPodsPaths.json as follows
[
"~/path_to_pods_1",
"~/path_to_pods_2",
]PodBuilder will automatically determine the proper path when switching a particular pod.
clean command
Deletes all unused files by PodBuilder, including .frameworks, .dSYMs and Source repos.
sync_podfile command
Updates the Application with all pods declared in the PodBuilder-Podfile file. This can come in handy when adding a new pod to the PodBuilder-Podfile file you don't won't to prebuild straight away.
Configuration file
PodBuilder.json allows some advanced customizations.
Supported keys
spec_overrides
This hash allows to add/replace keys in a podspec specification. This can be useful to solve compilation issue or change compilation behaviour (e.g. compile framework statically by specifying static_framework = true) without having to fork the repo.
The key is the pod name, the value a hash with the keys of the podspec that need to be overridden.
As an example here we're setting module_name in Google's Advertising SDK:
{
"spec_overrides": {
"Google-Mobile-Ads-SDK": {
"module_name": "GoogleMobileAds"
}
}
}skip_pods
You may want to skip some pods to be prebuilt, you can do that as follows:
{
"skip_pods": [
"PodA"
]
}build_settings
Xcode build settings to use. You can override the default values which are:
{
"build_settings": {
"ENABLE_BITCODE": "NO",
"GCC_OPTIMIZATION_LEVEL": "s",
"SWIFT_OPTIMIZATION_LEVEL": "-Osize",
"SWIFT_COMPILATION_MODE": "singlefile"
}
} build_settings_overrides
Like build_settings but per pod. Pod name can also refer to subspec.
{
"build_settings_overrides": {
"PodA": {
"SWIFT_OPTIMIZATION_LEVEL": "-O"
},
"PodB/Subspec": {
"APPLICATION_EXTENSION_API_ONLY": "NO"
}
}
}build_system
Specify which build system to use to compile frameworks. Either Legacy (standard build system) or Latest (new build system). Default value: Legacy.
license_filename
PodBuilder will create two license files a plist and a markdown file which contains the licenses of each pod specified in the PodBuilder-Podfile. Defailt value: Pods-acknowledgements(plist|md).
skip_licenses
PodBuilder writes a plist and markdown license files of pods specified in the PodBuilder-Podfile. You can specify pods that should not be included, for example for private pods.
{
"skip_licenses": ["Podname1", "Podname2"]
}subspecs_to_split
Normally when multiple subspecs are specified in a target a single framework is produced. There are rare cases where you specify different subspecs in different targets: a typical case is subspec specifically designed for app extensions, where you want to use a subspec in the main app and another one in the app extension.
Warning: This will work properly only for static frameworks (static_framework = true specified in the podspec). See issue and issue
{
"subspecs_to_split": ["Podname1/Subspec1", "Podname1/Subspec2", "Podname2/Subspec1", "Podname2/Subspec1"]
}lfs_update_gitattributes
Adds a .gitattributes to Frameworks/Rome and Frameworks/dSYM to exclude large files. If lfs_include_pods_folder is true it will add a the same .gitattributes to the application's Pods folder as well.
lfs_include_pods_folder
Behind the scenes
PodBuilder leverages CocoaPods code and cocoapods-rome plugin to compile pods into frameworks. Every compiled framework will be boxed (by adding it as a vendored_framework) as a subspec of a local podspec. When needed additional settings will be automatically ported from the original podspec, like for example xcconfig settings.
FAQ
After prebuilding my project no longer compiles
A common problem you may encounter is with Objective-C imports. You should verify that you're properly importing all the headers of your pods with the angle bracket notation #import <FrameworkName/HeaderFile.h> instead of directly importing #import "HeaderFile.h".
How to proceed in these cases?
- Rebuild all frameworks with PodBuilder
- Switch all your pods (use switch command or manually edit your Application-Podfile) back to the standard integration
- One-by-one switch your pods back to prebuilt, verifying everytime that your Project still compiles.
Build failed with longish output to the stdout, what should I do next?
Relaunch the build command passing -d, this won't delete the temporary /tmp/pod_builder folder on failure. Open /tmp/pod_builder/Pods/Pods.xcproject, make the Pods-DummyTarget target visible by clicking on Show under Product->Scheme->Manage shemes... and build from within Xcode. This will help you understand what went wrong. Remeber to verify that you're building the Release build configuration.
Do I need to commit compiled frameworks?
No. If the size of compiled frameworks in your repo is a concern (and for whatever reason you can't use Git-LFS) you can choose add the Rome and dSYM folder to .gitignore and re-run pod_builder build_all locally on every machine.
I get an 'attempt to read non existent folder `/private/tmp/pod_builder/Pods/ podname' when building
Please open an issue here. You may also add the name of the pod to the skip_pods key in the configuration file and try rebuilding again.
Git LFS
PodBuilder integrates with Git Large File Storage to move large files, like the prebuilt frameworks, out of your git repo. This allows to benefit from the compilation speed ups of the precompiled frameworks without impacting on your repo overall size.
When lfs_update_gitattributes = true PodBuilder will automatically update the .gitattributes with the files generated by PodBuilder when building pods.
Try it out!
Under Example there's a sample project with a Podfile adding Alamofire you can use to try PodBuilder out.
$ pod_builder init
$ pod_builder build_all
This will initialize the project to use PodBuilder and prebuild Alamofire, open the project in Xcode and compile.
Contributing
Bug reports and pull requests are welcome on GitHub at https://github.com/Subito-it/PodBuilder.
Caveats
Code isn't probably the cleanest I ever wrote but given the usefulness of the tool I decided to publish it nevertheless.
Authors
License
The gem is available under the Apache License, Version 2.0. See the LICENSE file for more info.