[NOT MAINTAINED] Vendor – an iOS library management system

Note: This software is currently in super alpha. I've been testing it with my own projects, and its seemed to work so far. If you have any problems, feel free to create an issue. If your having a problem with installing the vendor libraries into XCode, could you also provide me with your .xcodeproj file, you don't need to give me the source files just the project file is all I need.

Vendor makes the process of using and managing libraries in iOS easy. Vendor is modeled after Bundler. Vendor streamlines the installation and update process for dependent libraries. It also tracks versions and manages dependencies between libraries.

If you have RVM installed, simply run:

$ gem install vendor

Otherwise, you'll need to:

$ sudo gem install vendor

Specify your dependencies in a Vendors file in your project's root.

# Downloads the latest version of DKBenchmark from
# http://vendorkit.com
lib "DKBenchmark"

# Downloads version 0.5 of DKPredicateBuilder from
# http://vendorkit.com
lib "DKPredicateBuilder", '0.5'

# Include all the source files found in ~/Development/DKRest/Classes
# This is usefull when developing your own libraries
lib "DKRest", :path => "~/Development/DKRest", :require => "Classes"

# Checks out the git repo and includes all the files found in the
# AFNetworking folder in the repo. The require option is handy for
# repo's that haven't created vendor libraries and pushed them to
# VendorKit.com
lib "DKRest", :git => "git://github.com/AFNetworking/AFNetworking.git", :require => "AFNetworking"

# The Vendorfile allows you to specify targets to add your libraries to.
# By default, each library will be added to all targets, but if you have
# library that you only wanted to use in the "Integration Tests" target,
# you could do the following
target "Integration Tests" do
  lib "cedar", '0.2'
end

# These lines are an alternative syntax to the target specification above
lib "OCMock", :targets => [ "Integration Tests", "Specs" ]
lib "Kiwi", :target => "Specs"

You can do this by either creating a Vendorfile manually, or by running:

$ vendor init

$ vendor install
$ git add Vendors.lock

Installing a vendor library gets the latest version of the code, and adds them directly to your project in a Vendor group.

As part of the installation process the required frameworks are added aswell as any compiler/linker flags. The installed version of the library is captured in the Vendors.lock file.

Or step 3 for that matter!

If a vendor library has no framework dependencies, has no required additional compiler/linker flags, and has an XCode project, it doesn’t require a "vendorspec". An example is JSONKit, which may be specified as below. However, if another Vendor library requires JSONKit, JSONKit must have a vendorspec.

lib "JSONKit", :git => "https://github.com/johnezang/JSONKit.git"

However, if the vendor library requires frameworks or has dependencies on other Vendor libraries, it must have a vendorspec. As with Rubygems, a vendorspec is some declarative Ruby code that is open source and centrally managed.

To create a vendorspec, simply run:

$ vendor library init

This command will create a blank .vendorspec file that looks something like this:

Vendor::Spec.new do |s|

  s.name           "DKBenchmark"
  s.version        "0.1"

  s.authors        "keithpitt"
  s.email          "me@keithpitt.com"
  s.description    "Easy benchmarking in Objective-C using blocks"

  s.homepage       "http://www.keithpitt.com"
  s.source         "https://github.com/keithpitt/DKBenchmark"
  s.docs           "https://github.com/keithpitt/DKBenchmark/wiki"

  s.files          [ "DKBenchmark.h", "DKBenchmark.m", "static-lib.a" ]
  s.resources      [ "images/loading.png", "images/loading@2x.png" ]

  s.build_setting  :other_linker_flags, [ "-ObjC", "+lsdd" ]
  s.build_setting  "CLANG_WARN_OBJCPP_ARC_ABI", false
  s.build_setting  "GCC_PRECOMPILE_PREFIX_HEADER", "YES"

  s.framework      "CoreGraphics.framework"
  s.framework      "UIKit.framework"

  s.dependency     "JSONKit", "0.5"
  s.dependency     "ASIHTTPRequest", "~> 4.2"
  s.dependency     "AFINetworking", "<= 2.5.a"

end

Change what you need to match your project, then build a packaged vendor library by running:

$ vendor library build my_library.vendorspec

Now that you have a packaged library, you can push it to http://vendorkit.com by running:

$ vendor library push my_library.vendor

Vendor was inspired by a blog post entitled Vendor – Bringing Bundler to iOS. I had started working on Vendor after they started doing it themselves. Their repo can be found here https://github.com/bazaarlabs/vendor. I took many of the ideas (and parts of this Readme) from their code.

After reading this blog post by Ben Schwarz, I decided just to start something.

There is no value in hoarding away your treasures. If you’re genuinely creating things that you want to share with other people, then put them out there, fail, make mistakes and poor judgements... but for gods sake, do something!

So I've probably made mistake or two. But thats OK, because at least I have something working. If you see something you think could be done better, feel free to fork and submit a pull request :)

Thanks to the following libraries and people, without their contributions to open source, Vendor would have never been...

• Rubygems
• Bundler
• CocoaPods
• Kit
• Vendor
• Jari Bakken
• Tim Lee

1. Fork the project.
2. Make your feature addition or bug fix.
3. Add tests for it. This is important so I don't break it in a future version unintentionally.
4. Commit, do not mess with rakefile, version, or history. (if you want to have your own version, that is fine but bump version in a commit by itself I can ignore when I pull)
5. Send me a pull request. Bonus points for topic branches.

Copyright © 2011 Keith Pitt. See LICENSE for details.