Some useful features of a CocoaPods podfile

You can specify build settings for all pods or only for one pod. Here is an example:

post_install do | installer |
    installer.pods_project.targets.each do |target|
        target.build_configurations.each do |config|
            config.build_settings['DEBUG_INFORMATION_FORMAT'] = 'dwarf'
            config.build_settings['ENABLE_BITCODE'] = 'YES'
            
            if target.name == 'GPUImage2'
                target.build_configurations.each do |config|
                    config.build_settings['SWIFT_VERSION'] = '3.0'
                end
            end
        end
    end
end

You can create a podspec for a git repo, that is not a pod. Add this podspec to you project root and make a link for an added pod to specify a podspec. This is a better way to create pods for projects that do not have a pod, than creating a fork with a podspec, since you get latest updates more easily.

pod 'GPUImage2', :podspec => './GPUImage2.podspec'