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.

Fender

Answer 1

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

Pungent

That's nice! I didn't realise there were so many helpful custom controls that I can use. What's your experience of using them? are they well maintained across iOS versions? – Fender

CocoaControls? It's a listing of items from github, so it's a mixed bag in terms of quality. – Pungent

Answer 2

To expand Wain's answer:

pod install installs all listed pods in Podfile. If your using React Native it can link your dependencies with react-native. This can fix linking issues with dependencies. You can also edit the Podfile to manually import pods. All pods will be moved to a Pods directory.

Ourselves