SwiftPM, CocoaPods, and the Future of Enterprise Development for Apple Platforms

Key Takeaways:

• With the rise in popularity of SwiftPM, CocoaPods Trunk (the central public registry) will be moving to a read-only state. Thankfully, you can continue to publish your CocoaPods dependencies into JFrog Artifactory – even proxying the entire CocoaPods Trunk if desired.
• While SwiftPM is great, there is no true Public Registry. Artifactory fully supports the Swift Package Registry Service protocol, enabling you to set up your own private, secure, and highly performant Swift package registry.
• You can ease the transition from CocoaPods to SwiftPM with JFrog.

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Swift is the default and preferred language for developing applications within the Apple ecosystem. The Swift Package Manager (SwiftPM) has become the de-facto dependency manager for Swift, enabling developers to share and reuse code effortlessly. While its elegance lies in its simplicity, there’s a common concern about integrating SwiftPM into robust, enterprise-grade development workflows. This is where JFrog Artifactory shines.

In this post, we’ll demystify SwiftPM’s two primary dependency resolution mechanisms, explore how Artifactory enhances Swift package management, and clarify some common misconceptions, especially around Git integration. We’ll also touch upon the evolving landscape of dependency management for Apple platforms, including the community-driven CocoaPods.

The Historical Landscape: CocoaPods and the Rise of SwiftPM

For many years, CocoaPods stood as the dominant, community-driven dependency manager for Objective-C and Swift Cocoa projects. It provided a centralized registry (the “Trunk”) where developers published .podspec files – meta-data about their libraries – allowing users to simply declare dependencies in a Podfile and have CocoaPods manage the integration into Xcode projects. CocoaPods played a pivotal role in fostering the vibrant open-source ecosystem around Apple’s platforms.

However, with the introduction of SwiftPM directly integrated into Xcode and the Swift build system, the landscape began to shift. SwiftPM offered a native, Apple-supported solution, eliminating the need for external tools and offering a more seamless developer experience.

SwiftPM’s Dual Nature: Git-Based vs. Registry Protocol

From its inception, SwiftPM has leveraged Git repositories as its foundational method for dependency resolution. When you add a package to your Package.swift file as shown below, SwiftPM performs a git clone operation behind the scenes.

SwiftPM performs a git clone operation behind the scenes.

Swift

  
  .package(url: "https://github.com/apple/example-package-playingcard.git", from: "3.0.4"),
  

It fetches the entire Git repository, checks out the specified version (typically a Git tag), and then compiles the source code locally. This direct Git integration is incredibly powerful for open-source collaboration and simple projects.

However, with the introduction of Swift 5.7 in 2023 (shipping with Xcode 14), a significant advancement arrived: the Swift Package Registry Service specification (SE-0292). This specification defines an HTTP/HTTPS-based protocol for package discovery and retrieval, allowing for a more centralized and efficient way to manage Swift dependencies, particularly beneficial for enterprise use.

The Current State of Swift Package Hosting

One key aspect to understand about the Swift ecosystem is the absence of a single, centralized public registry for Swift packages, akin to npm for JavaScript or Maven Central for Java. Consequently, the vast majority of Swift packages continue to be hosted directly on Git platforms like GitHub, GitLab, and Bitbucket.

A notable resource, swiftpackageregistry.com, often causes confusion. It’s important to clarify that this is not a Swift package registry in the technical sense defined by Swift 5.7. Instead, it serves as a valuable catalog or index of publicly available Swift packages, with all package links ultimately pointing back to their original Git repository locations. Its purpose is to make discoverability easier, not to serve package binaries or source archives directly.

CocoaPods’ Evolving Role: A Shift Towards Read-Only

The transition towards SwiftPM as the preferred dependency manager has also impacted CocoaPods. In a significant development, the CocoaPods team has announced a plan to transition its Trunk, the central public registry, to a read-only state.

Key Dates & Timeline for CocoaPods Trunk becoming read-only:

• May 2025: New CocoaPods using the prepare_command field in a Podspec are being blocked for security reasons.
• Mid-late 2025: An initial wave of notifications will be sent to Podspec contributors, informing them of the impending read-only switch.
• September-October 2026: A second, more urgent wave of notifications will go out, noting roughly a month before a test run.
• November 1-7th, 2026: A test run of the read-only mode will be conducted, giving automated systems an opportunity to identify potential issues before the permanent change.
• December 2nd, 2026: The CocoaPods Trunk will become permanently read-only, meaning no new Podspecs can be published, and no updates to existing Podspecs will be accepted.

This decision signifies a natural evolution. While existing CocoaPods projects will continue to function — as long as GitHub and jsDelivr, which host the underlying Specs repo and CDN, remain operational — the inability to publish new packages or updates effectively marks a sunset for new development on the Trunk. This further underscores the importance for iOS developers to transition to SwiftPM for new projects and actively migrate existing ones.

JFrog Artifactory: Your Enterprise Swift Package Registry and CocoaPods Solution

JFrog Artifactory fills this critical void for organizations. Artifactory fully supports the Swift Package Registry Service protocol, enabling you to set up your own private, secure, and highly performant Swift package registry.

When you use Artifactory for Swift packages:

1. You publish your Swift packages to Artifactory as versioned source archives (typically .zip files), adhering to the registry specification.
2. Your SwiftPM clients are configured to point to your Artifactory instance as their registry.
3. Dependency resolution becomes HTTP-based. SwiftPM fetches package metadata and specific version archives directly from Artifactory, not by cloning Git repositories.

Beyond SwiftPM, Artifactory also provides comprehensive support for CocoaPods. This is vital for organizations with existing projects heavily reliant on CocoaPods, especially now that the CocoaPods Trunk is transitioning to read-only.

With Artifactory’s CocoaPods support, you can:

• Host your own private CocoaPods repositories: This allows you to continue publishing and managing your internal CocoaPods libraries securely, bypassing the read-only limitation of the public Trunk.
• Proxy and cache the public CocoaPods Trunk: Artifactory can serve as a remote repository that caches all public CocoaPods specifications and binaries. This means that even after December 2nd, 2026, your builds will continue to fetch existing dependencies reliably and efficiently from your Artifactory instance, without relying on direct access to the soon-to-be-static public Trunk. This provides crucial stability and ensures that your existing CocoaPods-based projects can continue to function and build predictably.

With these capabilities, JFrog Artifactory acts as a central hub, capable of managing both your modern SwiftPM dependencies and your legacy CocoaPods requirements during this important transition period and beyond.

This registry-based approach offers significant advantages, including:

• Faster Dependency Resolution: Downloading a .zip archive for a specific version is considerably faster than cloning an entire Git repository, especially for large projects with many dependencies.
• Enhanced Reliability and Immutability: Once a version is published to Artifactory, it’s typically immutable, guaranteeing consistent builds across your team and CI/CD pipelines.
• Security and Control: Host private packages securely within your organization, apply fine-grained access control, and integrate with JFrog Xray for vulnerability scanning.
• Offline Builds and Caching: Artifactory acts as a powerful cache, reducing reliance on external networks and accelerating subsequent builds.
• Centralized Management: Consolidate all your software artifacts (including Swift, Maven, npm, Docker, CocoaPods, etc.) in a single, unified platform.

A Clarification: Why Artifactory’s VCS Repositories Don’t Proxy SwiftPM’s Git Clones

A natural question is: “Artifactory has VCS repositories that connect to Git – can’t I use that to proxy my Git-based SwiftPM dependencies?”

This is a common misconception, and understanding the nuance is key. While JFrog Artifactory does offer VCS (Version Control System) remote repositories, these are designed to cache and proxy raw Git artifacts (like .zip archives of specific branches or tags) served over HTTP/HTTPS. They are not designed to emulate a full Git server.

When SwiftPM resolves a dependency using a .git URL, it performs native Git operations: git clone, git fetch, git checkout. It expects to communicate with a true Git server. Artifactory’s VCS repository, while interacting with Git behind the scenes, presents these Git assets as files via HTTP. It does not provide the underlying Git protocol necessary for SwiftPM’s direct Git cloning mechanism. Therefore, you cannot simply point SwiftPM’s .git URLs to an Artifactory VCS repository and expect it to function as a Git proxy for SwiftPM’s native Git operations.

The Future of Swift Package Management

The dependency management landscape for Apple platforms has undergone a significant evolution. While community-driven solutions like CocoaPods paved the way, the native integration and ongoing development of SwiftPM, coupled with the introduction of the Registry Protocol, are charting a new course.

While a public Swift package registry has yet to materialize, the groundwork laid by Swift 5.7 and the increasing adoption of private registries like Artifactory are bringing enterprise-grade capabilities to Swift development. It is entirely plausible that in the future, a community-driven or official public registry could emerge, further standardizing and streamlining Swift dependency management.

Until then, and for all your enterprise needs, JFrog Artifactory provides a robust, secure, and performant solution. By leveraging Artifactory as your private Swift Package Registry for SwiftPM, and by utilizing its powerful caching and private repository capabilities for CocoaPods, you empower your development teams with faster builds, greater control, and a centralized hub for all your Apple platform package dependencies, accelerating your journey towards efficient and reliable CI/CD pipelines.