GettingStartedwithCocoaPods

CocoaPods is an open source library management tool for Objective-C (both iOS and OS X). This article is going to briefly take you through how to get started. This is meant t0 be a quick-fire demo – check out the Getting Started guide for more details.

A CocoaPod (singular) is a specification for a library, usually open source. CocoaPods (plural) is the tool for managing these specs.

First, you&＃39;ll need to install CocoaPods. That&＃39;s pretty easy since CocoaPods is a Ruby Gem, and all Macs ship with Ruby. Open a terminal and type the following (it&＃39;ll ask you for your password):

sudo gem install cocoapods

That&＃39;ll install CocoaPods on your machine.

Next, you&＃39;ll need an Xcode project that you want to integrate. Use cd to navigate to the working directory of your app.

cd ~/Desktop/Demo

Next, type the following command:

pod init

This command creates an empty Podfile for you. Open it in a text editor. It&＃39;ll look like the following.

# Uncomment this line to define a global platform for your project
# platform :ios, "6.0"target "Demo" doendtarget "DemoTests" doend

Uncomment the second line to specify the platform (iOS) and the version (6). For your target (the first target), enter pod "SVProgressHUD", "0.9".

platform :ios, "6.0"target "Demo" dopod "SVProgressHUD", "0.9"endtarget "DemoTests" doend

Save the file and return to the text editor. Enter the following command.

pod install

This will produce the following output.

> pod install
Analyzing dependencies
Downloading dependencies
Installing SVProgressHUD (0.9)
Generating Pods project
Integrating client project[!] From now on use &＃96;Demo.xcworkspace&＃96;.

Follow the last line&＃39;s instruction and close your Xcode project and open the Xcode Workspace file that&＃39;s been created for you. An Xcode workspace is like a folder for Xcode projects. Your Pods project contains all of the libraries (pods).

Cool.

Now we need to import the SVProgressHUD.h header. Since it&＃39;s in another Xcode project, make sure to use angle brackets.

#import 

That&＃39;s it! We can now use our library. We&＃39;ve successfully integrated CocoaPods into our project. For each library you want to use, write pod "POD_NAME", "POD_VERSION" in your Podfile and re-run pod install.

There&＃39;s an Xcode plugin for CocoaPods if you&＃39;re not into the command line.

I gave a talk this morning on effectively using open source software. The slides are below.