Support for CocoaPods

[stefan.kiryazov_8753]

We are starting to use CocoaPods as part of an iOS build process but they are not supported by ProGet. Is anyone interested in that capability? We may need to get another package manager just for this.

Or shall I push back on this request? What other package formats are people using for Swift?

[stevedennis]

Hi @stefan-kiryazov_8753 ,

Thanks for the inquiry; I've updated our Other feed types docs with a link to this thread.

On a first glance, it looks like a CocoaPod itself is just a basic text file that acts as a "pointer" to a GitHub repository. The pod client uses the git client to "download" files and tags for versioning. In other words, there is no package file.

A CocoaPod repository is a Git repository, and the pod client seems to just use git client to commit/push files to the repo. In other words, there is no API for ProGet to implement.

Here is what a CocoPod repo looks like (note how it's just a bunch of files in a Git repo):
https://github.com/CocoaPods/Specs/tree/master/Specs

To make a "private repo", you basically just create a Git repository:
https://guides.cocoapods.org/making/private-cocoapods

This means that ultimately to implement a CocoPods repository, your only option is to create a private Git repository? That's my inital assessment at least.

And of course, we have no plans to add Git source code hosting to ProGet :)

From here, I recommend to ask the developers to research this a bit more, and maybe contribute their thoughts? It just doesn't seem like the iOS devs uses packages - it's all very open-source and just GitHub repositories.

Steve