Build your own Private Pod

Build your own Private Pod to use internally inside your company / team

Cocoapods is quite familiar to iOS Developer, and you (may) have been using it for years but mostly to integrate 3rd party libraries or frameworks. Have you ever wondered if you can use Cocoapods to host your personal / private library for internal use? It has some benefits:

• Encapsulate your core library code to avoid unwanted changes.
• Avoid pushing and pulling the whole framework to GitHub, it’s quite heavy and slow (you may even need to use GitHub Large File for this)
• It looks more professional :)

So, let’s get into this:

1. Prepare repositories

You will need 2 GitHub repositories for this:

• The 1st repository to host your Podspec, let call it:

https://github.com/username/Your_Private_Pod_Podspec.git

• The 2nd repository to host your actual library code, let call it:

https://github.com/username/Your_Private_Pod_Library.git

2. Install CocoaPods

$ sudo gem install cocoapods

3. Register Podspec repository

Navigate to Your_Private_Pod_Podspec folder and add the Podspec

$ cd Your_Private_Pod_Podspec
$ pod repo add YourPrivatePodSpec git@github.com:username/Your_Private_Pod_Podspec.git

4. Test Podspec repository

$ cd ~/.cocoapods/repos/YourPrivatePodSpec
$ pod repo lint .

5. Create new Private Pod Project

Navigate to Your_Private_Pod_Library folder and add the Pod

$ cd Your_Private_Pod_Library
$ pod lib create YourPrivatePod

6. Add your source code

Navigate to YourPrivatePod/Classes folder, it already had the file named ReplaceMe.swift. Delete this file and add your own source codes here.

7. Add your resources

Navigate to YourPrivatePod/Assets folder. Put your resource files here.

8. Make changes to YourPrivatePod.podspec

Follow this example

#
# Be sure to run `pod lib lint YourPrivatePod.podspec' to ensure this is a
# valid spec before submitting.
#
# Any lines starting with a # are optional, but their use is encouraged
# To learn more about a Podspec see https://guides.cocoapods.org/syntax/podspec.html
#

Pod::Spec.new do |s|
  s.name             = 'YourPrivatePod'
  s.version          = '1.0.0'
  s.summary          = 'Your Private Pod Library.'
  s.description      = <<-DESC
                        Your Private Pod Library:
                        - Models
                        - Assets
                        - API Handler
                        - Delegate...
                       DESC

  s.homepage         = 'https://github.com/username'
  s.license          = { :type => 'MIT', :file => 'LICENSE' }
  s.author           = { 'Long Trieu' => 'your_email@somemail.com' }
  s.source           = { :git => 'git@github.com:username/Your_Private_Pod_Library.git', :tag => s.version.to_s }
  s.ios.deployment_target = '10.0'
  s.swift_version    = '4.0'
  
  # Resource assets
  s.subspec 'Assets' do |ss|
    ss.resources = 'YourPrivatePod/Assets/**/*'
  end
  
  # Source files
  s.subspec 'Classes' do |ss|
    ss.source_files = 'YourPrivatePod/Classes/**/*.{swift,storyboard,xib}'
    ss.resources = 'YourPrivatePod/Databases/*.{xcdatamodeld}'
  end

  # Resource bundles
  s.resource_bundles = {
    'YourPrivatePod' => ['YourPrivatePod/Classes/**/*.{storyboard,xib,strings,plist,ttf,xcdatamodeld,json}']
  }
  
  s.frameworks       = 'CoreData'
  
  # Other 3rd party Dependencies
  s.dependency         'CocoaLumberjack/Swift', '~> 3.7.0'
  s.dependency         'MBProgressHUD', '1.2.0'
  s.dependency         'SDCAlertView', '11.1.2'
  s.dependency         'Firebase/Firestore', '7.5.0'
  s.dependency         'Firebase/Core', '7.5.0'
  s.dependency         'Firebase/Messaging', '7.5.0'
end

9. Test your YourPrivatePod.podspec

$ pod lib lint YourPrivatePod.podspec --allow-warnings

10. Push your Pod source code to GitHub

11. Tag your latest source code

Use the same version in your YourPrivatePod.podspec

$ git tag '1.0.0'
$ git push --tags

12. Publish Private Pod to Podspec repository

$ pod repo push YourPrivatePodSpec YourPrivatePod.podspec --verbose --allow-warnings

13. Update your Pod

Make changes to your source code and resources

Make changes to YourPrivatePod.podspec with new version

s.version          = '1.1.0'

Publish your new version like above (from step #8 to #11)

14. Release your Private Pod to use

Give other developers access to your Your_Private_Pod_Podspec repository only, remember that this repository only stores your Private Podspec and NOT your actual library code.

Then ask the developers to add this to their Podfile to use the Private Pod

puts 'Fetch GitHub version from Podspec'
source 'git@github.com:username/Your_Private_Pod_Podspec.git'
source 'https://github.com/CocoaPods/Specs.git'
pod 'YourPrivatePod'

I hope this guide gave you a better overview of how to build your own Private Pod :)

Enjoy!