Cocoapods::Bazel is a Cocoapods plugin that makes it easy to use Bazel instead of Xcode to build your iOS project. It automatically generates Bazel's BUILD files.

cocoapods-bazel can be setup to translate CocoaPod targets to provided Bazel rules. For example, you can use cocaopods-bazel to load framework targets using rules_ios. It's also flexible enough to allow users to use their own custom rules if needed.

⚠️ This is alpha software. We are developing this plugin in the open so you should only use it if you know what you are doing and are willing to help develop it.

Add this line to your application's Gemfile:

gem 'cocoapods-bazel'

And then execute:

bundle install

Or install it yourself as:

gem install cocoapods-bazel

This plugin will run extra steps after post_install to generate BUILD files for Bazel.

To enable the plugin, you can add something like the following section to your Podfile:

plugin 'cocoapods-bazel', {
  rules: {
    'apple_framework' => { load: '@build_bazel_rules_ios//rules:framework.bzl', rule: 'apple_framework' }.freeze,
    'ios_application' => { load: '@build_bazel_rules_ios//rules:app.bzl', rule: 'ios_application' }.freeze,
    'ios_unit_test' => { load: '@build_bazel_rules_ios//rules:test.bzl', rule: 'ios_unit_test' }.freeze
  }.freeze,
}

After checking out the repo, run bin/setup to install dependencies. Then, run rake spec to run the tests. You can also run bin/console for an interactive prompt that will allow you to experiment.

To install this gem onto your local machine, run bundle exec rake install. To release a new version, update the version number in version.rb, and then run bundle exec rake release, which will create a git tag for the version, push git commits and tags, and push the .gem file to rubygems.org.

There are some experimental features that are opt-in and can be enabled adding the plugin to the Podfile. Some of these features intentionally break the contract with the .podspecs specification in order to create BUILD files that are easier to maintain and/or evolve using Bazel features that don't have a direct relationship with what cocoapods does. You'll find the keys to enable such features and a brief explanation/motivation for each in Bazel::Config::EXPERIMENTAL_FEATURES (lib/cocoapods/bazel/config.rb).

Note that tests for the experimental features are located under spec/integration/experimental_features and these should mostly replicate the tests under spec/integration/monorepo but with the features on. Also it's a place to create tests specific to a experimental feature that not necessarily will affect the default usage of cocoapods-bazel.

When the BUILD.bazel files are generated you may choose to have cocoapods-bazel format the files using buildifier. This formatting is enabled by default if a buildifier executable is found using which buildifier.

You can disable buildifier formatting with buildifier: false in the options of the cocoapods-bazel plugin.

Additionally, if you'd like to use a custom buildifier executable you can provide the cocoapods-bazel plugin options with an array of arguments to execute to format files.

For example, if you have buildifier runnable target you've defined in Bazel with the name buildifier you can run this specific version with: buildifier: ['bazel', 'run', 'buildifier', '--']. (Note the -- allows bazel to forward arguments to the buildifier target).

Bug reports and pull requests are welcome on GitHub here.

The gem is available as open source under the terms of the Apache License 2.0.