What does the "pod install" command do on Mac OS X?

Question

I was watching a video on creating an iOS App using Xcode and Heroku. The following command was typed in Z shell zsh:

pod install

What does this do and what is it used for? A simple overview would be sufficient.

Answer 1

It installs the dependencies as specified by the pod file in the Xcode project folder. See cocoapods.org for details.