[objective-c] iOS - Build fails with CocoaPods cannot find header files

I have an iOS project using CocoaPods. Everything was working smoothly until another developer started to work on the same project. He made some changes (only to code as far as I know) and made a new branch in the repo. I have checked out his branch and tried to build it, but I am getting an error: ASLogger/ASLogger.h file not found.

Even if I delete the whole project and make a fresh copy and use 'pods install .' the build failure is still there. Do you have any idea where the problem can be? If you need some more infos, just ask.

I've found that including the library as a pod install directly helps dynamic libraries. For example, for Firebase:

pod 'RNFirebase', :path => 'path/to/node_modules/react-native-firebase/ios'

Or for ASLogger:

pod 'ASLogger', :path => 'path/to/node_modules/aslogger/ios' // path to header files

Changing or hardcoding HEADER_SEARCH_PATHS did not help me. If the error ever recurs, it's not necessary to rm -rf node_modules nor delete the pod file etc, I found it useful to clear the cache.

For react-native, I run

    rm -rf $TMPDIR/react-native-packager-cache-*
    rm -rf $TMPDIR/metro-bundler-cache-*
    rm -rf $TMPDIR/metro-* 
    rm -rf $TMPDIR/react-* 
    rm -rf $TMPDIR/haste-*
    rm -rf "$(getconf DARWIN_USER_CACHE_DIR)/org.llvm.clang/ModuleCache"
    npm start -- --reset-cache

For Xcode I remove folders in ~/Library/Developer/Xcode/DerivedData

The wiki gives an advice on how to solve this problem:

If Xcode can’t find the headers of the dependencies:

Check if the pod header files are correctly symlinked in Pods/Headers and you are not overriding the HEADER_SEARCH_PATHS (see #1). If Xcode still can’t find them, as a last resort you can prepend your imports, e.g. #import "Pods/SSZipArchive.h".

Both other answers didn't help here. I found 2 other problems that might fix it:

• The Project->Info->Configurations in the Xcode project (your project) should be set to 'Pods' for Debug, Release (and whatelse you have). See "Headers not found – search paths not included"

• Maybe you have to link the target with the link_with command. See "Unable to find headers in Static Library project"

EDIT You can check a symlink this way: create a textfile named 'check' without an extension. copy these lines into it:

file=/Users/youUserName/XcodeProjectName/Pods/BuildHeaders/SVProgressHUD/SVProgressHUD.h
if [[ ! -e $file &&  -L $file ]]; then
  echo "$file symlink is  broken!"
else
  echo "symlink works"
fi

Then go to the terminal, change to the folder where your check file is located and type

bash check

Here's what worked for me:

Go to the Target > "Build Settings" tab and find the "User Header Search Paths" setting.

Set this to "$(BUILT_PRODUCTS_DIR)" and check the "Recursive" check box.

Now the built target will search the workspace’s shared build directory to locate the linkable header files.

====

UPDATE

I had a similar (although slightly different) problem recently. It turned out Xcode couldn't find the Pods because I had opened up the .xcodeproj file rather than the .xcworkspace file. Might help others in the future.

None of the answers helped me (I had my pods linked with all targets, build configurations setup properly, correclty set search paths "$(inherited)", etc...).

Problem disappeared by itself after I updated cocoapods to the newest, debug version using standard install / update command:

   gem install cocoapods --pre

or:

   sudo gem install cocoapods --pre

(if sudo was used during installation).

It must have been cocoapods bug.

Header files, you'll be the death of me...

Finally got it to work by adding (including quotes)

"${PODS_ROOT}/BuildHeaders"

to the User Header Search Paths entry, and checking 'recursive'.

I will update the below things in my Build settings and I did not get any errors. To check these are the things while updating your cocoapods.

Build Settings

Enable Bit code - YES(if you are using bitcode)

Macro preprocessor - $(inherited)

Other linker flag - objc, -lc++, $(inherited)

Build architecture only

Debug - Yes

Relese - No

Search Path

Framework search path - $(inherited) $(PROJECT_DIR)

Library search path - $(inherited)

Header search path - $(inherited)

Update

I've updated this since my original answer, that got the downvote, so I hope this helps. And if it does, hopefully it will get my vote back.

If the headers aren't being imported, you probably have a conflict in the HEADER_SEARCH_PATHS. Try and add $(inherited) to the header search paths in your Build Settings to make sure that it pulls in any search paths included in the .xcconfig file from your CocoaPods.

This should help with any conflicts and get your source imported correctly.

for me the problem was in Other Linker flags value. For some reason I had no quotes in flags like -l"xml2" -l"Pods-MBProgressHUD".

Here's another reason: All the header paths seemed fine, but we still had an error in the precompiled (.pch) file trying to read a pod header

(i.e. #import <CocoaLumberjack/CocoaLumberjack.h>).

Looking at the raw build output, I finally noticed that the error was breaking our Watch OS Extension Target, not the main target we were building, because we were also importing the .pch precompiled header file into the Watch OS targets, and it was failing there. Make sure your accompanying Watch OS target settings don't try to import the .pch file (especially if you set that import from the master target setting, like I did!)

I was on the GM seed of Xcode 5.0 and I couldn't get any of these answers to work. I tried every single answer on SO on multiple different questions about header imports w/ cocoapods.

FINALLY I found a solution that worked for me: I upgraded to Xcode 5.0 via the Mac AppStore (installed on top of the GM seed) and now the header imports are working as expected.

I also still had a beta version of Xcode 5 on my system and I deleted that as well. Maybe it was a combination of the two things, but hopefully this helps someone else.

I have got the same problem, but the above solutions can't work. I have fixed it by doing this:

1. Remove the whole project
2. Run git clone the project and run the bundle exec pod install
3. cd the peoject and run remote add upstream your-remote-rep-add
4. git fetch upstream
5. git checkout master
6. git merge upstream/master

And then it works.

Have a try to comment this line for your target

#  use_frameworks!

Or you can refer to my another answer added unit testing target to xcode - failed to import bridging header won't go away

This was the answer for me, I updated cocoapods and I think that made the PODS_HEADERS_SEARCH_PATHS go away. My solution was similar to this but I used "$(PODS_ROOT)/Headers" – Andrew Aitken

Thank you so much for this answer. I had a hard time looking for ways to fix my problem. Thank you very much.

For me, what fixed it was the iOS deployment target for my Pods project was lower than my project itself. Once I made it the same as my project it was able to find the header file.

I think an ultimate solution is to go to Build settings -> Search Path -> User Header Search Paths, find your library path and go through it in a Finder. Make sure that all path exists including your import path.

For me my path was shorter than in a tutorial. In tutorial it was something like #import <SDK/path/to/sdk/File.h>, but turns out it is just #import <SDK/File.h>

Did you try importing Cocoapods style?

#import <ASLogger.h>

The info on the site is not really clear, I submitted a pull request:

https://github.com/CocoaPods/cocoapods.org/pull/34

Update: They pulled my request :)

I was the only developer in the team experiencing this same issue, it worked perfectly for everybody so I realized it had to be my environment. I tried a git clone of the same project in another directory and it compiled perfectly, then I realized it had to be Xcode caching stuff for my project path somewhere, that "somewhere" is the DerivedData folder, just remove it and do a clean build of your project, it worked for me.

You can get the path and even open the folder in finder by going to:

Xcode -> Preferences -> Locations -> **DerivedData

One simple workaround is: 1. Delete Pods folder and Podfile.lock file. But don't delete Podfile 2. Run following command in your project root folder:

pod install

I had to download the zip from git hub and drag the missing files into the Finder at corresponding paths in Pod/...

1.Check

build settings -> Search Path -> User Header Search Paths ->

• "${PODS_ROOT}/" recursive

2.Check import style(KEY POINT), if your's podfile have set

use_frameworks!

In yours File-Bridging-Header.h,the formatter should like this

#import "MBProgressHUD.h"

else should be below

#import <MBProgressHUD.h>

3.That must be work! trust me

What worked for me was selecting the Pods project, finding and selecting the target framework with the missing header in the Pod project's target directory and setting "Build Active Architecture Only" to "No" under "Architectures" in the target's build settings.

Update

Make sure your Podfile includes link_with on targets missing a config file. Cocoapods only sets the first target by default otherwise. e.g.

platform :osx, '10.7'
pod 'JSONKit',       '~> 1.4'

link_with 'Pomo', 'Pomo Dev', 'Pomo Tests'

------ End Update

Note: Please do note that you have to look into Project->Info->Configurations for steps below.

I had similar symptoms and found that the pods.xcconfig file was not being included in the specific target I was trying to build. Some of the other suggested solutions worked for me, but this one seemed to address part of the underlying issue.

The simple solution was to change set the configuration file for the targets that didn't have one set.

If you had the building errors after a "pod install" or a "pod update", it may be that one of your pods have been built with XCode 6.3 while you are still using a previous version.

In my case I had to update my OSX from mavericks to Yosemite to have Xcode 6.3 and solve the problem

I have other worked solution here,

1. Quit Xcode
2. Open Xcode and clean project
3. Build Pods project first
4. Build Project

If none of the above worked for you and you are finding this error because you just switched to use_frameworks! in your Podfile, read on:

I tried all the solutions above and a lot more before learning that it isn't about search header paths at all in my particular case; it's that when you switch to use_frameworks! in your Podfile you no longer need to include frameworks in your bridging header, and in fact Xcode will throw the very unhelpful "unable to find header" error.

What you need to do is remove all imports from your bridging header file, and instead use the Swift import Module in your individual Swift files as needed, just like you would for Swift frameworks.

AND if you are using any of the framework headers in your Obj-C classes (in my case we have a convenience class that used the FBSDK) you need to change it from a local to global import (this means change #import "Module.h" to #import <Module/Module.h>, which should autocomplete for you when you begin to type the framework name. In my case it was <AFNetworking/AFHTTPRequestOperationManager.h>).

Edit: I've since learned that doing an @import Module uses the umbrella file which is even safer.

I solved this issues for Xcode 8.2.1 by drag and drop framework that i want to use.

I found ${PODS_HEADERS_SEARCH_PATHS} is missing and it is not defined in my develop git branch, So I added "$(SRCROOT)/Pods/Headers/" for Header Search Paths with recursive

That is ok for me