How to update a single pod without touching other dependencies

Question

I understand that the following command will update a single pod: pod update <podname>. However this also updates the dependencies of other pods (pods that were not included in the update command) that you have previously installed. Is there a way to update a single pod and leave all other dependencies alone?

To understand the difference you **must** first understand what a [`podfile.lock`](https://guides.cocoapods.org/using/using-cocoapods.html#what-is-podfilelock) is. See the link and the video it references. — mfaani, Jul 22 '19 at 22:48

score 380 · Answer 1 · edited May 27 '21 at 16:44

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Make sure you have the latest version of CocoaPods installed.

$ pod update PODNAME was introduced recently.

See this issue thread for more information:

$ pod update

When you run pod update SomePodName, CocoaPods will try to find an updated version of the pod SomePodName, without taking into account the version listed in Podfile.lock. It will update the pod to the latest version possible (as long as it matches the version restrictions in your Podfile).

If you run pod update without any pod name, CocoaPods will update every pod listed in your Podfile to the latest version possible.

edited May 27 '21 at 16:44

SwiftiSwift

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answered Oct 14 '14 at 01:14

mattt

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Thanks for the response @mattt, I've got the latest version of CocoaPods(0.34.2) and I did try `$ pod update SomePodName`. However, there are some cases where CocoaPods will also try to update the dependencies of other pods. Long story short, SomePodName isn't the only pod that will get updated in some cases. – ken Oct 14 '14 at 02:30
@ken Of course. If a pod's dependencies change between versions, it follows that those dependencies would be updated accordingly. – mattt May 21 '15 at 17:16
@ShamsiddinSaidov That's a different question entirely. If you have a new question, you should ask that separately. – mattt May 21 '15 at 17:17
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@mattt, the dependencies I was referring to was not the dependencies of the pod that was being updated. I think I didn't structure the question well enough but assuming we update pod A, some other pods that are not the dependencies of pod A gets updated as well. This is an old question by the way so not sure if this has been fixed since then.. – ken May 21 '15 at 23:14
@ken In my case other pods update themselves no matter what for some reason. – Andrei Konstantinov Aug 04 '15 at 12:08
@AndreyKonstantinov, yes that is very similar to my case as well. – ken Aug 05 '15 at 00:45
@ken So, you haven't find a solution to the problem yet? – Andrei Konstantinov Aug 08 '15 at 19:15
@AndreyKonstantinov No i haven't – ken Aug 09 '15 at 22:28
@ken I think I found it. You need to use `pod install` instead of `pod update`. Yes. It still updates bunch of files in Pods directory, BUT if you'll look closely: it's all service files for pods - not the real code - so the only changed pod will be the one you deleted from Podfile. – Andrei Konstantinov Aug 19 '15 at 09:30
I too am facing problem while trying to update only one pod. It updates all the pods. I have some local pods too and it tries even to update that...not sure what need to be done. I tried 'pod install' too but no luck. – anoop4real Oct 13 '15 at 08:50
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`pod update` touches everything. It doesn't do what it says on the tin, and it's very frustrating. Randomly removes headers from other pods you've not told it to touch, etc. – Luke Nov 24 '15 at 08:55
I get this error `Ignoring ffi-1.14.2 because its extensions are not built. Try: gem pristine ffi --version 1.14.2 [!] The `podfile` Pod is not installed and cannot be updated` what do i need to do to fix?! – Learn2Code Sep 28 '22 at 14:38

atulkhatri · Answer 2 · 2016-04-06T18:45:41.987

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To install a single pod without updating existing ones-> Add that pod to your Podfile and use:

pod install --no-repo-update

To remove/update a specific pod use:

pod update POD_NAME

Tested!

edited Apr 06 '16 at 18:45

answered Apr 01 '16 at 11:24

atulkhatri

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Danpe · Answer 3 · 2015-12-05T21:07:26.360

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It's 2015

So because pod update SomePod touches everything in the latest versions of cocoapods, I found a workaround.

Follow the next steps:

Remove SomePod from the Podfile
Run pod install

pods will now remove SomePod from our project and from the Podfile.lock file.

Put back SomePod into the Podfile
Run pod install again

This time the latest version of our pod will be installed and saved in the Podfile.lock.

edited Dec 05 '15 at 21:07

answered Nov 30 '15 at 17:22

Danpe

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You can also use the trick I answer here http://stackoverflow.com/questions/29901337/is-it-possible-to-install-a-specific-pod/34193560#34193560 – Qiulang Mar 03 '16 at 03:16
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You can also do `pod update somepod anotherpod thirdpod` to update multiple pods at once :) – Entea Apr 05 '16 at 12:56
This is very clever. You're doing them in two independent steps and relying the podfile.lock to keep other dependencies intact. I just wonder if `SomePod` is updated to its latest dependencies wouldn't it update a shared dependency of `anotherPod` to the latest? Won't that happen regardless of what's in podlock? Otherwise it won't be able to satisfy the requirements of `SomePod` – mfaani Sep 16 '19 at 20:30

yonivav · Answer 4 · 2019-03-17T11:15:22.793

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just saying:

pod install - for installing new pods,

pod update - for updating existing pods,

pod update podName - for updating only specific pod without touching other pods,

pod update podName versionNum - for updating / DOWNGRADING specific pod without touching other pods

edited Mar 17 '19 at 11:15

answered Dec 10 '18 at 09:37

yonivav

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Did you mean `pod` instead of `git`? – ken Dec 11 '18 at 01:58
Sometimes it doesn't, I don't know why. Workout solution: 1. Remove the specific pod from Podfile 2 .pod install 3. Re-add specific pod to Podfile 4. pod install – yonivav May 12 '20 at 21:46

mfaani · Answer 5 · 2023-08-24T09:28:33.257

You might not be able to get 100% isolation. Because a pod may have some shared/common dependencies and if you attempt to update your single pod, then it would update the dependencies of other pods as well. If that is ok then:

tl;dr use:

pod update podName

Why? Read below.

pod update will NOT respect the podfile.lock. It will override it — pertaining to that single pod
pod install will respect the podfile.lock, but will try installing every pod mentioned in the podfile based on the versions its locked to (in the Podfile.lock).

This diagram helps better understand the differences:

From here

The major problem comes from the ~> aka optimistic operator.

Using exact versions in the `Podfile` is not enough

Some might think that specifying exact versions of their pods in their Podfile, like pod 'A', '1.0.0', is enough to guarantee that every user will have the same version as other people on the team.

Then they might even use pod update, even when just adding a new pod, thinking it would never risk updating other pods because they are fixed to a specific version in the Podfile.

But in fact, that is not enough to guarantee that user1 and user2 in our above scenario will always get the exact same version of all their pods.

One typical example is if the pod A has a dependency on pod A2 — declared in A.podspec as dependency 'A2', '~> 3.0'. In such case, using pod 'A', '1.0.0' in your Podfile will indeed force user1 and user2 to both always use version 1.0.0 of the pod A, but:

user1 might end up with pod A2 in version 3.4 (because that was A2's latest version at that time)
while when user2 runs pod install when joining the project later, they might get pod A2 in version 3.5 (because the maintainer of A2 might have released a new version in the meantime). That's why the only way to ensure every team member work with the same versions of all the pod on each's the computer is to use the Podfile.lock and properly use pod install vs. pod update.

The above excerpt was all derived from pod install vs. pod update

I also highly recommend watching what does a podfile.lock do

I get this error `Ignoring ffi-1.14.2 because its extensions are not built. Try: gem pristine ffi --version 1.14.2 [!] The `podfile` Pod is not installed and cannot be updated` what do i need to do to fix?! — Learn2Code, Sep 28 '22 at 14:38
@Learn2Code I just ran on `pod install` on an M1 Mac. I got the same message. But it's not an error. It's a warning... — mfaani, Sep 28 '22 at 21:01

score 25 · Answer 6 · answered Jul 08 '15 at 17:29

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Just a small notice.

pod update POD_NAME

will work only if this pod was already installed. Otherwise you will have to update all of them with

pod update

command

answered Jul 08 '15 at 17:29

Neftanic

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You can still use `pod install` first, which will install only the missing one(s), without touching the others. Although there's no use case for wanting to update a pod that you haven't installed, is there? – aramusss Dec 18 '19 at 10:48

score 10 · Answer 7 · answered Sep 30 '16 at 01:15

10

I'm using cocoapods version 1.0.1 and using pod update name-of-pod works perfectly. No other pods are updated, just the specific one you enter.

answered Sep 30 '16 at 01:15

user3344977

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score 3 · Answer 8 · answered Nov 27 '17 at 21:48

This is a bit of an outlier and not likely to be what the OP was dealing with, but pod update <podname> will not work in all cases if you are using a local pod on your computer.

In this situation, the only thing that will trigger pod update to work is if there is a change in the podspec file. However, making a change will also allow for pod install to work as well.

In this situation, you can just modify something minor such as the description or summary by one letter, and then you can run the install or update command successfully.

score 1 · Answer 9 · answered Nov 09 '20 at 04:01

pod update POD_NAME will update latest pod but not update Podfile.lock file.

So, you may update your Podfile with specific version of your pod e.g pod 'POD_NAME', '~> 2.9.0' and then use command pod install

Later, you can remove the specific version naming from your Podfile and can again use pod install. This will helps to keep Podfile.lock updated.

How to update a single pod without touching other dependencies

9 Answers9

$ pod update

It's 2015

Using exact versions in the `Podfile` is not enough

Linked

How to update a single pod without touching other dependencies

9 Answers9

$ pod update

It's 2015

Using exact versions in the Podfile is not enough

Linked

Using exact versions in the `Podfile` is not enough