CocoaPods issue with Firebase and BoringSSL-GRPC (Xcode 12.5)

[ulmentflam]

When building in Xcode 12 and installing the library through CocoaPods I get the error 'openssl_grpc/base.h' file not found. It appears that the libxlsxwriter tries to use the BoringSSL-GRPC md5.h file when both pods are installed. At first I thought it was related to this issue in the CocoaPods repo and issue #337. However, when I ran pod update and pod install from the 1-10-stable branch, the issue persisted. The issue is not present in older versions of the Firebase SDK or when using older versions of BoringSSL-GRPC.
My thought is that there is still a problem with the header files being symlinked to the wrong place, but the previously mentioned solutions should have fixed that issue.

The logs say:

In file included from /Users/.../Pods/libxlsxwriter/third_party/md5/md5.c:42:
/Users/.../Pods/BoringSSL-GRPC/src/include/openssl/md5.h:60:10: fatal error: 'openssl_grpc/base.h' file not found
#include <openssl_grpc/base.h>
         ^~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
1 error generated.

So libxlsxwriter is attempting to use the "md5.h" file from BoringSSL-GRPC and not the "md5.h" file included in the libxlsxwriter project. This leads me to believe that the headers are still not being linked correctly by CocoPods. Any help on fixing this issue or a better methodology for installing both of these frameworks would be greatly appreciated.

[jmcnamara]

Could you create a small project that demonstrates this issue. Maybe based on https://github.com/FrankenApps/LibXlsxWriterSwiftSample

Also, is it possible to re-arrange the order of pod usage/compilation so that libxlsxwriter is included before BoringSSL.

Adding @FrankenApps in case he has any suggestions.

[ulmentflam]

@jmcnamara I replicated the issue here https://github.com/ulmentflam/LibXlsxWriterSwiftSample just adding 'BoringSSL-GRPC' to the pod file causes the issue. I didn't have to include all the Firebase dependencies.

[jmcnamara]

Does the order of inclusion have any effect, i.e., if you put libxlsxwriter before borings or vice-versa?

[ulmentflam]

Unfortunately not, it seems to always build last for some reason.

[ulmentflam]

I even moved the order of inclusion in the Podfile.lock and that has no effect on the order that the dependencies are installed.

[jmcnamara]

Just to avoid any ambiguity can you add the modified pod file you are using with the LibXlsxWriterSwiftSample repo.

[ulmentflam]

Absolutely

# Uncomment the next line to define a global platform for your project
platform :ios, '13.0'

target 'LibXlsxWriterSwiftSample' do
  # Comment the next line if you don't want to use dynamic frameworks
  use_frameworks!

  # Pods for LibXlsxWriterSwiftSample
  pod 'libxlsxwriter', '~> 0.9'
  pod 'Sourceful', '~> 0.2' #Only present for synzax highlighting
  pod 'BoringSSL-GRPC'
end

[ulmentflam]

@jmcnamara @FrankenApps I believe I have a fix for this issue in PR #343. The header files link correctly if preserve_paths is included in the podspec and references the 'third_party' header files.

[jmcnamara]

@ulmentflam Thanks for the fix. It looks valid.

I was just about to respond to ask if you could change the ordering of the include files within Xcode to see if that would resolve the issue. Could you try that as well to see if works (for the sake of completeness). Change the order in "Framework search paths" and "Header search paths" in Build Settings:

[ulmentflam]

@jmcnamara I updated the order in "Framework Search Paths" and "Header Search Paths" and it resulted in the same build error.

[ulmentflam]

[jmcnamara]

Cool. Thanks for checking.

I'll merge in your fix. It needs to be squashed since there are some WIP commits in the PR. I'll see if Github can do that cleanly. If not I'll get you to rebase it and resubmit.

[ulmentflam]

Not a problem!

[jmcnamara]

Thanks for the debugging and fix. I've pushed a new release (1.1.0) and new Cocoapod with the fix.

[ulmentflam]

You are very welcome! Thanks for your help and getting a release out so quickly!

[adesun2k]

Please any solution yet? Still can't find a way around for XCode/Swift5