CocoaSeeds

Git Submodule Alternative for Cocoa. Inspired by CocoaPods.

• iOS 7 projects do not support the use of Swift libraries from CocoaPods or Carthage.

  ld: warning: embedded dylibs/frameworks only run on iOS 8 or later

• CocoaSeeds just downloads the source code and add it to your Xcode project. No static libraries, no dynamic frameworks.

• Git Submodule sucks.

• It can be used with CocoaPods and Carthage.

You can get CocoaSeeds from RubyGems.

$ [sudo] gem install cocoaseeds

A Seedfile is a ruby script that manifests the dependencies of your project. You can manage third party libraries by simply specifying them in the Seedfile. Currently, CocoaSeeds supports only GitHub and BitBucket repositories. However, we are planning to support other version control systems.

Let's make an empty file named Seedfile in the directory where your Xcode project file is located. Here is a sample Seedfile:

Seedfile

github "Alamofire/Alamofire", "1.2.1", :files => "Source/*.{swift,h}"
github "devxoul/JLToast", "1.2.5", :files => "JLToast/*.{swift,h}"
github "devxoul/SwipeBack", "1.0.4"
github "SnapKit/SnapKit", :commit => "62e7645", :files => "Source/*.{swift,h}"

git "https://gitlab.com/MyCompany/CompanyLibrary.git", "1.1.0"
local "PrivateLibrary", "../libs/PrivateLibrary", :files => "Source/*.{swift,h}"

target :MyAppTest do
  github "Quick/Quick", "v0.3.1", :files => "Quick/**.{swift,h}"
  github "Quick/Nimble", "v0.4.2", :files => "Nimble/**.{swift,h}"
end

Can you guess what each line does? It has basic information about the third party libraries.

Each line in a Seedfile consists of three parts: source, tag, and files. Let's look at the second line of the previous sample.

github "devxoul/JLToast", "1.2.5", :files => "JLToast/*.{swift,h}"
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~  ~~~~~~~  ~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
       (Source)          (Version)             (Files)

Tip: You can pass an array to :files for multiple file patterns:

:files => ["/path1/*.swift", "/path2/*.swift"]

Want to use branch names instead of tags? See the Branch support section.

Third party libraries can be included as a specific target by creating a target block. For example, if you want to add some testing libraries such as Quick and Nimble into test target, you can specify them like this:

target :MyAppTest do
  github "Quick/Quick", "v0.3.1", :files => "Quick/**.{swift,h}"
  github "Quick/Nimble", "v0.4.2", :files => "Nimble/**.{swift,h}"
end

If the .xcodeproj file is located in other location, you can specify the path in Seedfile.

xcodeproj "path/to/Project.xcodeproj"

target :MyApp do
    github "devxoul/JLToast", "1.2.5", :files => "JLToast/*.{swift,h}"
end

After you are done with your Seedfile, it's time to load those libraries into your project. This is pretty simple. Just open the terminal, cd to your project directory and execute seed install command.

$ seed install

Then, all the source files will be automatically downloaded and added to a group named 'Seeds'.

Build your project and enjoy coding!

You can specify a branch name instead of the tag. What you need to do is just replacing the tag with the branch name.

github 'devxoul/SwiftyImage', 'swift-2.0', :files => 'SwiftyImage/SwiftyImage.swift'

Use exclude_files to exclude files from files pattern.

github 'devxoul/Carte', '0.2.2', :files => 'Carte/*', :exclude_files => "Carte/Carte.h"

If the resource files are sprecified in files, they will be added to Copy Bundle Resource build phase instead of Compile Source build phase.

github 'author/Repository', 'x.y.z', :files => ['Source/*', 'Images/*']

Since CocoaSeeds tries to include source files directly rather than linking dynamic frameworks, it is important to make sure that all sources have different names. CocoaSeeds provides a way to do this:

Seedfile

swift_seedname_prefix!  # add this line

github "thoughtbot/Argo", "v1.0.3", :files => "Argo/*/*.swift"
github "thoughtbot/Runes", "v2.0.0", :files => "Source/*.swift"

Then all of source files installed via CocoasSeeds will have names with the seed names as prefix.

• Are you using this in real-world projects? (Does Apple allow apps to use CocoaSeeds?)

  • Of course I am. I'm developing a social media service that has about 2 million users. The app is on AppStore without any complaints from Apple.

• Can I ignore Seeds folder in VCS (version control system)?

  • Yes, you can ignore the Seeds folder (by adding it to .gitignore if you use Git).

CocoaSeeds is under MIT license. See the LICENSE file for more info.