Using CocoaPods

<When to use pod install vs pod update?

Many people are confused about when to use pod install and when to use pod update. Especially, they often use pod update where they should instead use pod install.

You can find a detailed explanation about when to use each and what are the intended usage of each command in this dedicated guide.

<Should I check the Pods directory into source control?

Whether or not you check in your Pods folder is up to you, as workflows vary from project to project. We recommend that you keep the Pods directory under source control, and don't add it to your .gitignore. But ultimately this decision is up to you:

<Benefits of checking in the Pods directory

• After cloning the repo, the project can immediately build and run, even without having CocoaPods installed on the machine. There is no need to run pod install, and no Internet connection is necessary.
• The Pod artifacts (code/libraries) are always available, even if the source of a Pod (e.g. GitHub) were to go down.
• The Pod artifacts are guaranteed to be identical to those in the original installation after cloning the repo.

<Benefits of ignoring the Pods directory

• The source control repo will be smaller and take up less space.
• As long as the sources (e.g. GitHub) for all Pods are available, CocoaPods is generally able to recreate the same installation. (Technically there is no guarantee that running pod install will fetch and recreate identical artifacts when not using a commit SHA in the Podfile. This is especially true when using zip files in the Podfile.)
• There won't be any conflicts to deal with when performing source control operations, such as merging branches with different Pod versions.

Whether or not you check in the Pods directory, the Podfile and Podfile.lock should always be kept under version control.

<What is Podfile.lock?

This file is generated after the first run of pod install, and tracks the version of each Pod that was installed. For example, imagine the following dependency specified in the Podfile: