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Version: v6
6.0 Beta Documentation

Swift Package Manager

Swift Packages are Apple's new first-party tool for software dependacies. Traditionally Capacitor has used Cocoapods for managing depenacies internally and for plugins, however now is the time to move to a supported solution.

In Capcacitor 6, you can now choose between using Cocoapods or Swift Package Manager (SPM). Almost all current capacitor-team supported plugins support SPM, namely the plugins in capacitor-plugins.

We've tried our best to make sure you don't have to change much about how you work with Capacitor to use SPM, but there are a few things to understand.

How it works​

When a Capcacitor project is using SPM we use a 'Base SPM' package that will serve as the place that references all of your projects dependancies:

Base SPM Picture

The Capcacitor CLI will modify the CapAPP-SPM package when you sync new plugins. It is important you do not touch the contents here because the CLI can and will change things.

Using SPM in a new Capacitor project​

First we'll start with our normal npm init @capacitor/app:

Demo Step 1

Then we're going to edit the project's package.json to use the latest 6.0 betas, by replacing every instance of 'latest' with 'next'. It should read like this when it's ready:

{
  "name": "capacitor-app",
  "version": "1.0.0",
  "description": "An Amazing Capacitor App",
  "main": "index.js",
  "keywords": [
    "capacitor",
    "mobile"
  ],
  "scripts": {
    "start": "vite",
    "build": "vite build",
    "preview": "vite preview"
  },
  "dependencies": {
    "@capacitor/core": "next",
    "@capacitor/camera": "next",
    "@capacitor/splash-screen": "next"
  },
  "devDependencies": {
    "@capacitor/cli": "next",
    "vite": "^2.9.13"
  },
  "author": "",
  "license": "ISC"
}

Once you're done editing the package.json file, use this to have NPM upgrade this Capacitor installation to the latest 6.0 beta:

npm install

Now we want to add the iOS platform to our project:

npm install @capacitor/ios@next

Next let's build the web project:

npm run build

After that is complete we can add the iOS project. We need to add the option --packagemanager SPM to the normal add command:

npx cap add ios --packagemanager SPM

Now you can use npx cap open ios to open the iOS project and run your app from there.

Add and use a Capactior Plugin with SPM​

So let's add a plugin to this project and do something with that plugin.

Start with installing the Capacitor App plugin:

npm install @capacitor/app@next

Then let's sync the web app. This will add the App plugin SPM to the iOS project:

npx cap sync

You can now use the App plugin normally.

More details coming soon

Converting existing plugins to SPM​

More details soon, but check this repository out: https://github.com/ionic-team/capacitor-plugin-converter

Troubleshooting​

After adding plugins try to 'reset package caches' in Xcode:

Demo Step 1

Contents

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