[Swift] Support CocoaPods alongside Swift Package Manager

[bbqsrc]

We have a package that uses CocoaPods for package management, and migrating to SwiftPM is not an option for us due to the project being a polyglot project.

Would it be acceptable to support CocoaPods alongside SwiftPM? Should be possible to keep everything as it is with just the addition of a Podspec file.

[mustiikhalil]

@bbqsrc that would be amazing! How hard is it going to be? and would it require a specific user to maintain it? or can anyone update the version?

if you are up to it, a PR would be nice

[bbqsrc]

How hard is it going to be?

Not too hard. Would require hooks to the CI process to publish to the Specs repo, that's about it. Then people can do pod 'FlatBuffers' and it should Just Work™.

More info: https://guides.cocoapods.org/making/making-a-cocoapod.html

would it require a specific user to maintain it? or can anyone update the version?

Should only require bumping the relevant metadata on releases and updates to Swift minimum language or minimum platform.

if you are up to it, a PR would be nice

Will see what I can do this week.

[mustiikhalil]

@aardappel this would be a very cool addition to swift!

@bbqsrc nice!

[mustiikhalil]

trunk I guess we have two options here

• Requires one of the actual main contributors to Publish it and then add people building for swift as maintainers
• @bbqsrc just publishes it and then add main contributors as maintainers?.
  @aardappel what do you think?

[aardappel]

In https://github.com/google/flatbuffers/wiki/FlatBuffers-release-process we already have a bunch of publishing actions for other languages, so we could add one for Swift.. what is not great me for me (if I am the one to be doing this publishing, is needing additional accounts, keys, tools etc to do so, especially if this needs to be on a mac).

The alternative is that @mustiikhalil takes care of this publishing, much like @rw already publishes Rust, etc.

The other thing is wether this packaging method requires yet another file in the root of the repo :)

[bbqsrc]

It should not be required. Using as a direct git dependency won't work, but that's very much not the primary way of consuming a pod. The publisher would simply need to be in the swift directory as their working directory while publishing.

…

On Wed, 12 Feb 2020, 22:43 Wouter van Oortmerssen, ***@***.***> wrote: In https://github.com/google/flatbuffers/wiki/FlatBuffers-release-process we already have a bunch of publishing actions for other languages, so we could add one for Swift.. what is not great me for me (if I am the one to be doing this publishing, is needing additional accounts, keys, tools etc to do so, especially if this needs to be on a mac). The alternative is that @mustiikhalil <https://github.com/mustiikhalil> takes care of this publishing, much like @rw <https://github.com/rw> already publishes Rust, etc. The other thing is wether this packaging method requires yet another file in the root of the repo :) — You are receiving this because you were mentioned. Reply to this email directly, view it on GitHub <#5766?email_source=notifications&email_token=AACEEO5KKJLEGVOR6KWRXT3RCRUQ5A5CNFSM4KT3KRT2YY3PNVWWK3TUL52HS4DFVREXG43VMVBW63LNMVXHJKTDN5WW2ZLOORPWSZGOELSP45I#issuecomment-585432693>, or unsubscribe <https://github.com/notifications/unsubscribe-auth/AACEEOZRKXPWOSEQSD36NVLRCRUQ5ANCNFSM4KT3KRTQ> .

[mustiikhalil]

@bbqsrc if that's the case do you want me to work on it? Since as @aardappel suggested I will have to publish it either ways

[bbqsrc]

@mustiikhalil that would be great. I can offer advice if you run into any troubles.

[mustiikhalil]

@bbqsrc sound good! I will start working on it, and if I need help I will be tagging you

[mustiikhalil]

I have been working on it, however I found out that we need the podspec file to be in the root of the library. should we give swift it's own branch @aardappel which would allow us to use SPM and cocoapods without making it be in the root as @mzaks suggested while doing the swift PR? or should I simply add it into the root folder for now?

#5708 as you can see here, it was already requested.

I can also simply maintain it in here:
https://github.com/mustiikhalil/flatbuffers/tree/swift So whenever people would want to install it for SPM and Cocoapods, they can just use it directly from there. (ofc I will have to first merge to the main repository then fetch and merge to that one)

[mustiikhalil]

@rw can you enlighten us on how did you make the rust cargo work although it's not in the root of the repository?

[rw]

@mustiikhalil Rust Cargo doesn't need packages to have any relation to git files. A common design pattern in Rust is to have multiple subcrates that live in the same repository. That's unfortunate that Swift seems so strict on this point.

[mustiikhalil]

@bbqsrc I've added FlatBuffers to CocoaPods, you can follow the readme in the swift branch

[bbqsrc]

Thanks so much, will let you know when I test it.