[alloy]

> editing my Xcode project files underneath me creeps me out

You can use the `--no-integrate` flag and it never touches your project, leaving integration of the Pods Xcode project up to you as you see fit.

[quesera]

In fairness to CocoaPods, I should clarify:

It's not simply that Xcode project files are edited that creeps me out. Cocoapods is actually trying to solve a complex problem, more so than other package managers like RubyGems or Pip or CPAN. Project files will therefore need to be edited.

It's really the fact that Xcode makes it inconvenient to do the work CocoaPods is trying to accomplish. I do trust you guys to do things right, I do not trust that Apple will keep your needs in mind when they make changes to Xcode.

There are features of CocoaPods that I just don't use, preferring to perform things manually. I don't use those features mostly due to the concerns described above, and my comfort level with doing them myself. If I did break my habits and use those features, the convenience might outweigh the complexity introduced.

I'd love to see Apple explicitly target CocoaPods compatibility as a beta testing goal.

[Manfred]

Unfortunately this is a problem with most monolithic tools. The only sensible solution is to keep points of integration as minimal as possible so you can adapt when there are changes.

Minimalism combined with the fact that CocoaPods has a pretty large active community we should be able to adapt if large changes do occur.

[alloy]

Very fair points.

I hope to see the day that they will sanction a small format around clang modules, we can always hope :)