carthage

Carthage is a command line tool primarily used in macOS development environments. It is a dependency manager that allows developers to easily manage and incorporate external frameworks and libraries into their projects.

Developed by GitHub, Carthage uses a declarative approach, meaning that developers specify the libraries and versions they want to include in a project using a simple text file called a Cartfile.

One of the key advantages of Carthage is that it builds frameworks through source code, meaning that the final binary produced is specific to the user's build environment. This can help reduce debugging and compatibility issues among team members.

Carthage leverages the power of Git for dependency resolution, allowing developers to specify exact library versions or branch names directly in the Cartfile.

Instead of vendoring frameworks into the project, Carthage builds them separately and then references them by creating a minimal Xcode project. This approach ensures that redundant code and build artifacts are minimized, resulting in cleaner and more modular projects.

Carthage also supports Swift packages, making it compatible with modern package management practices and enabling developers to easily manage their dependencies across platforms.

While Carthage is widely used in macOS development, it may not be the best choice for all projects, as it lacks certain features found in other dependency managers, such as centralized dependency repositories or the ability to manage transitive dependencies.