Whilst RubyMotion is new, and the number of RubyMotion specific libraries is growing fast, there are already loads of native Objective-C libraries out there.

These instructions show you how to use Cocoapods in combination with Bundler.

Cocoapods is a dependency manager, like RubyGems, but for Objective-C projects.

In this example, I’ve chosen to install ViewDeck. ViewDeck makes it easy to implement the sliding panel user interface made popular by the Facebook iOS app.

The CocoaPods website is a great place to search for available ‘Pods’.

Summary of steps

• Include the motion-cocoapods gem
• Setup Cocoapods
• Add ViewDeck to your application Rakefile

Bundler

If you haven’t got Bundler setup, I’ve written some instructions for using Bundler with RubyMotion.

Cocoapods

Add cocoapods to your Gemfile:

gem 'motion-cocoapods'

Install the gem via bundler:

$ bundle

Setup Cocoapods via:

$ pod setup

Add ViewDeck to your Rakefile

In your Rakefile you need to add the ViewDeck pod and QuartzCore Framework (required by ViewDeck):

Motion::Project::App.setup do |app|
  # Frameworks
  app.frameworks += [
    'QuartzCore'
  ]

  # Cocoapods
  app.pods do
    pod 'ViewDeck'
  end
end

Finally tell motion-cocoapods to download your dependencies by running:

$ rake pod:install

ViewDeck will be automatically built and linked the next time you build your app.

In future you can grab updated versions by running:

$ rake pod:update

Using ViewDeck

I’ve ported the Objective-C example ViewDeck application over to RubyMotion.

Feel free to check it out.