CocoaPods manages library dependencies for your Xcode projects.
The dependencies for your projects are specified in a single text file called a Podfile. CocoaPods will resolve dependencies between libraries, fetch the resulting source code, then link it together in an Xcode workspace to build your project.
Ultimately the goal is to improve discoverability of, and engagement in, third party open-source libraries by creating a more centralised ecosystem.
Getting Started
<Installation
CocoaPods is built with Ruby and it will be installable with the default Ruby available on OS X. You can use a Ruby Version manager, however we recommend that you use the standard Ruby available on OS X unless you know what you're doing.
Using the default Ruby install will require you to use
sudo when installing gems. (This is only an issue for the duration of the gem installation, though.)$ sudo gem install cocoapods
If you encounter any problems during installation, please visit this guide.
<Sudo-less installation
If you do not want to grant RubyGems admin privileges for this process, you can tell RubyGems to install into your user directory by passing either the
--user-install flag to gem install or by configuring the RubyGems environment. The latter is in our opinion the best solution. To do this, create or edit the .profile file in your home directory and add or amend it to include these lines:export GEM_HOME=$HOME/.gem
export PATH=$GEM_HOME/bin:$PATH
Note that if you choose to use the
--user-install option, you will still have to configure your .profile file to set the PATH or use the command prepended by the full path. You can find out where a gem is installed with gem which cocoapods. E.g.$ gem install cocoapods --user-install
$ gem which cocoapods
/Users/eloy/.gem/ruby/2.0.0/gems/cocoapods-0.29.0/lib/cocoapods.rb
$ /Users/eloy/.gem/ruby/2.0.0/bin/pod install
<Updating CocoaPods
To update CocoaPods you simply install the gem again
$ [sudo] gem install cocoapods
Or for a pre-release version
$ [sudo] gem install cocoapods --pre
If you originally installed the cocoapods gem using
sudo, you should use that command again.
Later on, when you're actively using CocoaPods by installing pods, you will be notified when new versions become available with a CocoaPods X.X.X is now available, please update message.
Using a CocoaPods Fork
There are two ways to do this, using a Gemfile (recommended) or using a development build that are in discussion or in implementation stage.
<<External resources
from https://guides.cocoapods.org/using/getting-started.html