how to know which pod spec file your cocoapod install is pointing to

Question

I'm trying to install sharekit via cocoapods. If I search for sharekit on the cocoapod website.. I'm instructed to put this in the podfile:

pod 'ShareKit', '~> 2.5'

the sharekit pod on the website links to this podspec file, which is tagged as 2.5.6.

so far so good.

But when I run the pod install command (I also added platform :ios, '6.0' b/c not doing so will throw compatibility errors) I get this error:

[!] Unable to satisfy the following requirements: - SSKeychain (~> 0.2.1) required by ShareKit/Core (2.5.6)- SSKeychain (~> 1.2.2) required by Evernote-SDK-iOS (1.3.1)

My question is: why is it telling about what evernote 1.3.1 required? b/c the 2.5.6 podspec has this in it:

s.subspec 'Evernote' do |evernote|
   evernote.source_files = 'Classes/ShareKit/Sharers/Services/Evernote/**/*.{h,m}'
   evernote.dependency 'Evernote-SDK-iOS', '~> 1.3.0'
   evernote.dependency 'ShareKit/Core'
   evernote.libraries = 'xml2'
   evernote.xcconfig = { 'HEADER_SEARCH_PATHS' => '$(SDKROOT)/usr/include/libxml2' }
 end

so it's clearly linking to evernote 1.3.0

the podspec on sharekit master repo does list evernote 1.3.1 as a dependency.. but what does that gotta do with my pod install request?

to make things even weirder.. it doesn't matter if i put pod 'ShareKit', '~> 2.5.6' or pod 'ShareKit', '~> 2.5.3'.. i still get errors talking about sharekit 2.5.6.. why is that?

Answer 1

The following explains how pod versions are linked into your project (it goes hand in hand with Semantic Versioning.

Besides no version, or a specific one, it is also possible to use logical operators:

'> 0.1' Any version higher than 0.1

'>= 0.1' Version 0.1 and any higher version

'< 0.1' Any version lower than 0.1

'<= 0.1' Version 0.1 and any lower version

In addition to the logic operators CocoaPods has an optimisic operator ~>:

'~> 0.1.2' Version 0.1.2 and the versions up to 0.2, not including 0.2 and higher

'~> 0.1' Version 0.1 and the versions up to 1.0, not including 1.0 and higher

'~> 0' Version 0 and higher, this is basically the same as not having it.

Source: http://guides.cocoapods.org/using/the-podfile.html

If you want to explicitly link to a specific version, then change your podfile to the following:

pod 'ShareKit', '2.5'

Answer 2

I think this will solve the issue temporarily:

# Install 1.3.0 fix pod install error
pod 'Evernote-SDK-iOS', '1.3.0'
pod 'ShareKit', '~> 2.5'