[mikeash]

I don't refuse to use third-party libraries out of hand. If something is good, I'll use it. However, my assessment of the cost/benefit tradeoff differs from others. Take, for example, AFNetworking. It seems to be the gold standard for any iOS app that makes web calls, to the point where it's practically a default first step when making a new project for many programmers. Me, I don't understand the appeal. The cost is enormous due to adding a huge quantity of code (and therefore bugs) to your app, and the benefit over using what Apple provides is tiny.

If the cost/benefit tradeoff appears worthwhile, taking into account the large cost from adding any third-party code, I'm happy to make it. It just doesn't happen very often.

To me, CocoaPods doesn't move the needle on the cost/benefit tradeoff, because the cost of what CocoaPods handles is extremely small compared to the total. Thus why I don't really understand the point of it. It takes something that's infrequent and already easy, and makes it a little easier.

[al45tair]

Agreed. CocoaPods might be useful if there were a lot of high quality library code out there that we could use, but right now, like Mike, I just don't see it.

The main use-case I can see for something like CocoaPods actually has to do with commercial library code---i.e. code that you purchase and for which you get proper support.

I'll also add this: CocoaPods, as it stands today, also creates a risk, in that it's possible that an updated version of some library you're depending on might have a different license---maybe one that's incompatible with the license for the software you're working on. As far as I can tell, CocoaPods has no mechanism to deal automatically with this issue, which makes its use in commercial projects dangerous IMO.

[alloy]

CocoaPods has been generating aggregated lists of licenses of libraries that you use in your app since a very long time, I don’t know of any other system that people use to pull-in dependencies that does this.

We also only accept libraries that specify a license. This has lead to many more licensing issues being clear than before people used CocoaPods.

We are, however, definitely not going to build in functionality that would give you the green or red light, because it’s impossible to do this right in an automated fashion. In the end, any licensing issue is your responsibility regardless, of how you pull the code in.

[escoz]

>> incompatible license...

You can always just continue to use the same version of the library you always used.