Company
Date Published
Author
Mark Anderson
Word count
775
Language
English
Hacker News points
None

Summary

In the evolving landscape of iOS development, the transition from Cocoapods to Swift Package Manager (SPM) marks a significant shift in dependency management, especially for Capacitor developers. Cocoapods, which was introduced in 2011 to simplify dependency management with a Podfile and command-line tools, is now in maintenance mode with its Specs repository set to become read-only by December 2026. As a response, Capacitor 8 will prioritize SPM as the default for new projects, although developers can still choose Cocoapods temporarily. This change necessitates updates to third-party and Cordova plugins for compatibility with SPM. Capacitor offers tools and guides to facilitate the transition, including the capacitor-plugin-converter for easing the conversion of plugins to SPM, though challenges remain for those mixing Objective-C and Swift code. The Capacitor team is committed to ensuring a smooth transition and expanding the functionality offered by SPM while preparing to phase out Cocoapods integration.